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Ethereum’s upgrade pipeline is rarely short on ambition, but the sheer volume of competing ideas heading into its next major release underscores just how contested the protocol’s direction has become. Developers are currently sifting through 66 Ethereum Improvement Proposals to determine what makes it into Hegotá, the upgrade slated for next year, with privacy emerging as one of the more consequential debates on the table.
The next Ethereum core developer call, scheduled for Monday at 2:00 pm UTC, is expected to begin shaping a shortlist. Whatever survives the cut will define a significant portion of Ethereum’s development trajectory heading into 2027.
One Confirmed Slot, and a Push to Add Three More
At present, only one proposal has secured a confirmed place in Hegotá: FOCIL, which stands for Fork-choice enforced inclusion lists. FOCIL would allow a committee of validators to compel pending transactions into blocks, directly targeting the network’s censorship resistance. It is a governance-level fix to a problem that has grown more visible as block builders have accumulated disproportionate influence over which transactions actually get processed.
Beyond FOCIL, Ethereum Foundation contributor Toni Wahrstätter used a Sunday post on X to argue that three additional proposals deserve inclusion: Frame Transactions (EIP-8141), Keyed Nonces (EIP-8250), and Recent Roots for Frame Transactions (EIP-8272). Together, Wahrstätter wrote, these would “unlock native privacy, allowing privacy apps to work without having to rely on intermediaries.”
That framing matters. Today, privacy on Ethereum is largely bolt-on, meaning applications that want to shield user data or transaction details must depend on third-party tools and middleware layers sitting outside the base protocol. Embedding privacy primitives directly into Ethereum’s layer-1 would change the architecture fundamentally, giving developers a native foundation to build on rather than a patchwork of workarounds. Whether the broader developer community agrees these three proposals are ready for inclusion in Hegotá is precisely what the upcoming calls will determine. Proposals that do not make the cut are not necessarily dead; they can be reconsidered for a subsequent upgrade.
Hegotá Comes After Glamsterdam, Which Is Already in Motion
It is worth keeping the sequencing clear. Before Hegotá arrives, Ethereum developers are preparing to ship Glamsterdam, described as one of the most consequential upgrades of 2025. Glamsterdam is designed to improve scalability, harden the layer-1, and reduce friction for everyday users, with a mainnet launch expected sometime in the second half of 2026 according to Ethereum’s public roadmap.
Glamsterdam is the more immediate milestone. Hegotá is the planning horizon beyond it, which is why the current scoping exercise, while still early, carries real weight. Decisions made in the next few developer calls will lock in the engineering focus for teams working on Ethereum through much of 2026 and into 2027.
Why This Matters Beyond the Technical Detail
For investors and builders in Malaysia and Singapore, Ethereum’s upgrade cadence is not abstract. Both markets have seen growing institutional and retail engagement with Ethereum-based applications, from tokenised assets and DeFi protocols to NFT infrastructure. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has been among the more active regulators in the region when it comes to digital asset frameworks, and any shift in Ethereum’s base-layer privacy model will eventually surface in compliance conversations around transaction traceability and anti-money laundering obligations.
Native privacy primitives at the protocol level could make certain Ethereum applications more attractive to users who currently avoid on-chain activity precisely because of its transparency. At the same time, regulators who have built oversight frameworks around the assumption that blockchain transactions are publicly auditable will need to think carefully about what protocol-level privacy means for their existing rules.
None of that is imminent. Hegotá is a 2027 story, and the three privacy proposals Wahrstätter is advocating for have not yet been confirmed for inclusion. But the direction of travel is becoming clearer with each upgrade cycle. Ethereum’s developers are moving, deliberately and incrementally, toward a protocol that handles privacy natively rather than leaving it entirely to the application layer. How far and how fast that shift goes will depend on what survives the next round of calls, and the ones after that.
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