Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter says the protocol’s architecture team is pushing to prioritize a package of proposals in the next major network upgrade. The goal: let privacy pools pay their own transaction fees without relying on intermediaries.
The proposals are candidates for Hegotá, Ethereum’s upgrade scheduled for 2027, which follows the Glamsterdam hard fork targeted for the end of 2026. According to Decrypt, 66 proposals are under consideration for Hegotá. Developers are narrowing the field ahead of finalization.
Wahrstätter, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, wrote on X that the Protocol Architecture team wants to prioritize two proposals in particular: Frame Transactions (EIP-8141) and Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists, known as FOCIL (EIP-7805). FOCIL is currently the only proposal confirmed for inclusion in Hegotá. Frame Transactions and its companion proposals remain candidates.
Frame Transactions would give wallets more control over how transactions are executed on Ethereum. In practice, that means developers building privacy tools could program payment flows directly into the protocol rather than routing through a third party.
The package would work alongside Keyed Nonces and Recent Roots (EIP-8272) to let privacy pools pay their own fees. “Together with Frames, these enable privacy pools where the pool itself can pay fees, removing the need for intermediaries,” Wahrstätter wrote. “Add FOCIL support and privacy transactions also gain protocol-level inclusion guarantees.”
FOCIL, the inclusion-list proposal, would make it harder to censor eligible transactions by enforcing their inclusion at the fork-choice level. That part is new. Combined with Frame Transactions, it would give privacy transactions both a fee-payment mechanism and a protocol-level guarantee that once a transaction is eligible, it cannot be quietly dropped.
A third proposal, Transaction Assertions (EIP-7906), would let wallets set conditions on what a transaction can do after it is submitted. The practical effect: a wallet could constrain a transaction’s behavior even after broadcasting it to the network.
Wahrstätter described frames as a “much more expressive transaction format” and a key building block for Ethereum’s next-generation transaction experience, according to Decrypt.
The proposal package sits within a broader set of 66 candidates for Hegotá. Other proposals focus on scaling, including changes to how Ethereum prices transactions and manages state growth as the network’s gas limit rises toward 500 million to 600 million. Developers are also considering separating block-access-list data from the execution payload and testing optional zkEVM proofs on mainnet.
The timeline is tight. Developers are 256 days into Glamsterdam and want to ship it by the end of 2026. “Hegotá will need to ship in 2027, and that’s what makes the next few decisions so important,” Wahrstätter wrote.
She cautioned against treating the upgrade as a catch-all. “A fork can’t be a wishlist by the community or core devs jamming on what Ethereum should eventually become,” Wahrstätter wrote in an earlier post on Saturday. “Instead, we have to decide what Ethereum should become next, and what has to wait.”
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said earlier this month that privacy and quantum resistance had become greater priorities for the network, according to Decrypt. In February, Buterin outlined plans to replace cryptography vulnerable to quantum computers. Ethereum researchers have proposed a roadmap for faster transactions, native privacy, and quantum-resistant security through 2029.
No exact activation date for Hegotá has been set beyond the 2027 target. No timeline has been given for final proposal selection, and it remains unclear whether the Frame Transactions package will be confirmed for the upgrade. Only FOCIL has been confirmed so far.
