Ethereum’s ‘Hegota’ upgrade slated for late 2026 as devs accelerate roadmap

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• Ethereum developers earlier this month agreed on the name and rough timing of the network’s second major upgrade scheduled for 2026, settling on “Hegota” as the next milestone in the blockchain’s development roadmap.
• Hegota will follow “Glamsterdam,” Ethereum’s next major upgrade, which is currently expected to roll out in the first half of 2026.
• The decision reflects a relatively new approach to Ethereum development, with core contributors aiming to ship network changes more frequently rather than bundling large numbers of upgrades into releases that happen roughly once a year.

Ethereum developers earlier this month agreed on the name and rough timing of the network’s second major upgrade scheduled for 2026, settling on “Hegota” as the next milestone in the blockchain’s development roadmap.

Hegota will follow “Glamsterdam,” Ethereum’s next major upgrade, which is currently expected to roll out in the first half of 2026. That sequencing places Hegota tentatively in the second half of the year, continuing a faster cadence of protocol upgrades than Ethereum has historically maintained.

The decision reflects a relatively new approach to Ethereum development, with core contributors aiming to ship network changes more frequently rather than bundling large numbers of upgrades into releases that happen roughly once a year. That shift comes after developers faced criticism from parts of the Ethereum community earlier this year, with some users and builders arguing that protocol development was lagging behind the network’s rapid growth and increasing demands.

Developers are expected to finalize the full scope of Glamsterdam at their next meeting in early January. As a result, no major headline changes — formally known as Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) — are expected to be announced for Hegota until at least February. Even so, early speculation has already begun around what the upgrade could include.

One likely source of potential Hegota features is deferred work from Glamsterdam. In previous Ethereum upgrades, EIPs that failed to make it into a release due to time or complexity constraints were often pushed to the following upgrade, and developers expect a similar dynamic this time around.

Initial discussions around Hegota have focused on Verkle Trees, a newer data structure designed to help Ethereum nodes store and verify large amounts of data more efficiently. If implemented, Verkle Trees could significantly reduce hardware requirements for node operators, improving decentralization by making it easier for more participants to run nodes.

As with past upgrades, the name “Hegota” follows Ethereum’s convention of combining a Devcon host city with a star name. In this case, the name is derived from “Bogota,” the execution layer upgrade, and “Heze,” the consensus layer upgrade.

“Fusaka shipped PeerDAS in addition to a myriad of minor features and Glamsterdam’s major features will include Block-level Access Lists and enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation. Now we begin outlining the subsequent upgrade: Hegota,” the Ethereum Foundation said in a recent blog post.

Read more: Ethereum’s ‘Glamsterdam’ upgrade aims to fix MEV fairness

2025 was defined by a stark divergence: structural progress collided with stagnant price action. Institutional milestones were reached and TVL increased across most major ecosystems, yet the majority of large-cap Layer-1 tokens finished the year with negative or flat returns.

This report analyzes the structural decoupling between network usage and token performance. We examine 10 major blockchain ecosystems, exploring protocol versus application revenues, key ecosystem narratives, mechanics driving institutional adoption, and the trends to watch as we head into 2026.

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, a reporter at CoinDesk.

In this issue:

• Most important tokenholder rights debate’: Aave faces identity crisis
• Ethereum’s ‘Glamsterdam’ upgrade aims to fix MEV fairness
• Bitcoin isn’t under quantum threat yet, but upgrade could take 5-10 years
• Foundation behind restaking protocol EigenLayer plans bigger rewards for active users

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