Vitalik Buterin Says Hegota May Be Ethereum’s Last ‘Normal’ Fork

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Hegota, a network upgrade expected next year, will likely be Ethereum’s last “normal” fork, with later upgrades shifting toward proof systems and advanced cryptography. In a blog post titled The cryptographic world computer, published Sunday and shared on X, Buterin said future changes would involve recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and quantum-safe design. He argued that Ethereum in the future may be called a blockchain largely for historical reasons, as its architecture moves closer to a hybrid system that combines Bitcoin’s original ideas with cryptographic techniques developed over decades of academic research. The post also outlined changes to node verification, block construction, and performance targets, including a projected 4 to 8 seconds per slot and 8 to 32 seconds to finality by 2030. Buterin added that decentralization could become a source of speed in some cases rather than only a cost for safety, while developers may be pushed toward parallelized computation. He linked the essay to his earlier Lean Ethereum rebuild concept and to Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake’s strawmap roadmap introduced in February.