Ethereum is targeting a quantum-resistant Layer 1 by December 2029, with the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol cluster laying out a multi-fork plan as Hegotá enters its scoping phase.

Post-quantum security sits alongside privacy, faster finality, state management and zkEVM development, while the next upgrade faces strict limits on additional scope.

Ethereum Sets 2029 Deadline for Quantum Resistance

In a post published on September 8, the Ethereum Foundation said roughly 60 researchers, engineers, and domain experts across all nine Protocol teams contributed to a unified assessment of 62 EIPs proposed for Hegotá.

Their work produced 397 grades before contested proposals were discussed collectively.

For Ethereum’s core developers, the main target is quantum resistance across the execution, consensus, and data layers by December 2029. That deadline matches migration targets set by Google, Cloudflare and Microsoft, although the timing of “Q-day,” when quantum computers could threaten current cryptography, remains uncertain.

Planning assumptions are deliberately aggressive. The Foundation said Ethereum should prepare for Q-day as early as 2030, while acknowledging that credible estimates generally place it later and that it may never arrive. But December 2029 will remain “non-negotiable” until at least January 2027, when progress in quantum computing will be reassessed with outside experts.

Under the current roadmap, Glamsterdam is expected in December 2026, while full post-quantum readiness sits at L*, five forks later. Reaching that target would require an average fork cadence of 7.2 months. A minimum viable post-quantum milestone at J* could instead be reached with a 12-month cadence.

For that contingency, MV-PQ would keep Ethereum operating through Q-day with reduced guarantees. Researchers are still working out exactly what those guarantees would be. Full resistance across execution, consensus, and data remains the December 2029 objective.

Hegotá itself is not the quantum-resistant fork. Instead, it is the upgrade that determines whether the subsequent quantum-security work can arrive on schedule.

Two proposals sit at the top of the Hegotá list. One is FOCIL, which targets transaction inclusion by allowing validators to impose requirements on builders, while the other, Frame Transactions, gives account abstraction and a path towards replacing vulnerable secp256k1 keys.

Hegotá Scope Puts Security Ahead of Broader Changes

Only two of the 62 proposals received an S grade, meaning they “must ship.” Fifteen earned A grades and are expected to ship, while eight landed in B and seven in C. Twenty-eight proposals were declined, with another two left pending until mainnet evidence becomes available.

Beyond FOCIL, there is “little appetite” for additional consensus-layer scope unless a proposal directly supports post-quantum readiness. Limited testing and engineering capacity are major considerations as developers prepare Hegotá and the forks that follow.

Quantum risk has been getting attention throughout the year, with Vitalik Buterin sharing a roadmap in February that showed plans to replace vulnerable consensus-layer BLS signatures and introduce account abstraction through EIP-8141.

But rather than treating quantum resistance as a single upgrade, Ethereum’s latest plan spreads work across several forks, with developments made alongside changes involving privacy, state management, fast finality and mandatory execution proofs.

Next steps include a Reddit AMA scheduled for September 16 at 2 p.m. UTC, where the Protocol cluster plans to discuss its priorities, the Hegotá tier list, and questions from the Ethereum community.

Source: CryptoPotato