SKN | Vitalik Buterin Says Hegotá Could Be Ethereum’s Last ‘Normal’ Fork

Key Points

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the planned Hegotá upgrade could be the network’s last “normal” fork before development moves toward more advanced cryptographic technologies.
• Buterin described PeerDAS as an important step in Ethereum’s transition from a conventional blockchain toward a “cryptographic world computer.”
• The proposed architecture could move more computation offchain while relying on Ethereum for cryptographic verification, settlement and access to shared onchain state.

Hegotá Could Mark a Major Ethereum Transition

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the network’s planned Hegotá upgrade could be the final major fork whose technology would still look familiar to developers who knew Ethereum in its earlier years.

In a post published Sunday, Buterin said Hegotá, planned for 2027, could be Ethereum’s last “normal” fork before the network begins moving more aggressively toward technologies such as recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, optimized consensus mechanisms and quantum-resistant cryptography.

The shift would represent a change in how Ethereum approaches computation and verification rather than simply another collection of incremental protocol improvements.

PeerDAS Begins a New Phase

Buterin identified PeerDAS as an important milestone in this transition.

PeerDAS allows Ethereum nodes to verify data availability by sampling portions of data instead of downloading complete datasets. According to Buterin, the technology marked the beginning of Ethereum’s movement “from being just a blockchain to being something much more powerful.”

Under the broader vision, Ethereum would evolve into what Buterin calls a “cryptographic world computer.” Instead of requiring every node to download and re-execute every computation, the network could increasingly rely on cryptographic proofs to verify work performed elsewhere.

That architecture could allow applications to conduct more intensive computation offchain while using Ethereum’s base layer to verify the results, settle transactions and maintain shared state.

Computation Could Move Offchain

Ethereum researcher Barnabé Monnot highlighted one potential consequence of this architecture: substantially reducing the computational burden placed on the network.

Moving computation offchain while committing the results and corresponding proofs to Ethereum could allow nodes to perform less work while maintaining cryptographic assurances about the validity of those results.

Monnot also argued that Ethereum should continue keeping important application records directly onchain. Maintaining critical state at the base layer could allow users to observe and interact with applications without depending entirely on external servers or intermediaries.

The debate reflects a central design question for Ethereum’s future: which information and computations should remain directly onchain, and which can safely be performed elsewhere and verified through cryptographic proofs?

DeFi Could Use More Complex Computation

The proposed architecture could also expand the types of decentralized applications that Ethereum can support.

Pseudonymous commentator Cryptographic suggested that complex operations could occur outside smart contracts before Ethereum verifies and settles the resulting transactions. In decentralized finance, for example, collateral analysis, liquidation routing or matching borrowers and lenders could potentially be performed offchain while Ethereum verifies that the resulting state changes comply with protocol rules.

Such an approach could allow applications to handle more sophisticated computations without requiring every Ethereum node to independently perform the same workload.

The model would preserve Ethereum’s role as the settlement and verification layer while shifting some computational requirements to specialized systems.

Questions Remain Over Proof-Based Systems

Not everyone sees the transition in the same way.

Crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro questioned how much demand exists for systems based on continuous cryptographic verification compared with traditional trust-based financial infrastructure.

Many existing financial services depend on reputation, regulation and legal enforcement rather than cryptographic proofs for every operation. That creates an open question over where Ethereum’s proof-based architecture provides the greatest practical advantage and where conventional institutional frameworks may remain sufficient.

The debate also highlights that Ethereum’s proposed evolution involves more than improving transaction throughput. It could change the division of responsibilities between the blockchain, offchain computation and application infrastructure.

Outlook

Hegotá could represent an important transition point in Ethereum’s long-term development if Buterin’s vision takes shape. The network is increasingly exploring an architecture in which cryptographic proofs allow computation to occur outside the base layer while Ethereum retains responsibility for verification, settlement and shared state. The resulting system could make Ethereum applications more computationally capable, while raising new questions about onchain data availability, infrastructure design and the role of trust versus cryptographic verification.