Ethereum will reduce the number of proposals selected for its Hegotá update to 66

Ethereum is starting to sort out Hegotá, its upgrade expected in 2027. As of August 16, 66 proposals remained in the running. FOCIL has already secured its spot, while three other EIPs could give privacy applications tools built directly into the protocol.

FOCIL leads the way, without making Ethereum private

In the long list of proposals associated with Hegotá, FOCIL is currently the only one already marked as “Scheduled”. Tremplin.io detailed how it works: the idea is to prevent a block builder from permanently ruling out a transaction that is nevertheless valid.

L’EIP-7805 provides for a committee of validators to establish a list of transactions to be included in the block. The manufacturer retains his role, but can no longer decide alone what goes in or not.

FOCIL nevertheless remains at the draft stage. So this is not yet a feature available on the mainnet.

Toni Wahrstätter, contributor to the Ethereum Foundation, summed up the situation on August 16 on X :

FOCIL is already chosen as the headliner of Hegotá. I think Frame Transactions should join it.

The nuance is important. FOCIL works on censorship resistance, not on transaction confidentiality. Amounts and addresses do not become invisible. It is rather in the area of ​​three other proposals that this part of the project is being played out.

Three building blocks to facilitate privacy applications

The goal is not to add a “private mode” to Ethereum. Instead, developers are looking to provide mechanisms that applications can use without having to rebuild everything on top of the protocol.

L’EIP-8141, Frame Transactionsfirst changes the way a transaction can be structured. Validation, execution and gas payment can be separated. An account can then more freely define how a transaction is authorized and how its fees are paid.

This approach is consistent with the roadmap dedicated to privacy on Ethereum. Part of the complexity currently managed by wallets or applications could thus go down directly to the protocol level.

L’EIP-8250, Keyed Noncestackles another problem. Instead of using a single suite of nonces, a Frame transaction could have multiple independent domains. For certain private protocols using the same sending address, this would prevent a pending transaction from blocking subsequent ones.

However, the EIP does not anonymize any address on its own. L’EIP-8272 completes the system with “Recent Roots”. A transaction could refer to a recent cryptographic root, verified by the client before execution. For a privacy application, this makes it easier to prove that an expense is based on a recent state of the system.

Taken together, then, the three EIPs look more like a toolkit than an out-of-the-box privacy solution.

Hegotá still has to make choices

The main obstacle now remains the calendar. Not all of the 66 proposals still active will be able to reach Hegotá.

Toni Wahrstätter indicates that the next exchanges between developers will mainly have to identify EIPs capable of quickly obtaining implementations, then going through devnets and testnets before possible delivery in 2027.

THE followed by Forkcast also illustrated the complexity of sorting. As of August 16, the platform listed 69 entries related to Hegotá: 65 “Proposed”, FOCIL already “Scheduled” and three other proposals classified in categories such as “Considered”, “Declined” or “Withdrawn”.

Confidentiality is also just one issue among others. Developers also discuss data costs, state growth, shorter slots, issuance, anti-correlation penalties, zkEVMs and post-quantum resistance.

According to the Ethereum roadmapGlamsterdam must precede Hegotá. It is therefore over the course of the next developer calls and especially the first devnets that the fate of the trio EIP-8141, EIP-8250 and EIP-8272 should become clearer.

For the moment, talking about “native confidentiality” therefore remains premature. Ethereum prepares the foundations; These proposals still need to survive sorting and pass from paper to code.