What Is Ethereum Hegotá? FOCIL and Native Smart Accounts

On-Chain

01 October 2026

Hegotá is still in the early planning stage. The Ethereum Foundation has listed it as the next network upgrade after Glamsterdam, with a target date around 2027, though no specific date has been confirmed. Only two proposals are officially marked as "Scheduled for Inclusion": FOCIL (EIP-7805) and Frame Transactions (EIP-8141). The rest of the scope is still under discussion, with dozens of EIPs in "Considered" or "Rejected" status.

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FOCIL: Making Transaction Inclusion Independent of a Single Block Builder

On Ethereum today, block builders decide which transactions go into a block. If someone can influence enough builders, a valid transaction could be deliberately delayed or excluded, and users have no way to force it on-chain other than waiting.

FOCIL solves this problem. Its full name is Fork-choice Enforced Inclusion Lists. The core mechanism is: each block has a committee (currently designed as 17 randomly selected validators) that proposes a list of transactions that "should be included." If a block builder ignores valid transactions from this list, the network rejects the block through fork-choice rules.

This means that to successfully censor a transaction, an attacker would need to control both the block builder and the committee, which greatly increases the difficulty and cost. FOCIL has been rated S-tier (must include) by the Ethereum Foundation and is the core consensus-layer change in Hegotá.

One controversy to note: FOCIL requires validators to include all valid transactions, including those related to sanctioned addresses. Critics worry this could create legal risks for validators and add protocol complexity. Supporters argue this is a key step in maintaining Ethereum as a neutral settlement layer. Without FOCIL, the protocol is "vulnerable to large-scale censorship events."

Frame Transactions: Making Smart Accounts a Native Protocol Feature

If you have used Ethereum, you may have noticed a limitation: only "externally owned accounts" (EOAs) that hold private keys can initiate transactions. Smart contract accounts are flexible but cannot start transactions on their own. This limitation led to application-layer solutions like ERC-4337, but it runs outside the protocol, adding extra costs, complexity, and reliance on intermediary infrastructure.

Frame Transactions (EIP-8141) moves this to the protocol layer. Every transaction no longer requires a fixed signature verification method. Instead, the account itself decides what counts as a "valid transaction." Accounts can run their own validation logic.

Social recovery: An account can set guardians. If you lose your private key, you can recover access through guardians instead of losing it permanently.
Multi-signature and spending limits: Set rules at the account level, such as requiring multiple signatures above a threshold or limiting daily spending.
Sponsored gas: A third party can pay transaction fees on behalf of users, so users do not need to hold ETH first.
Batch transactions: Combine multiple operations into one.
Alternative signature schemes: Accounts can choose different signing algorithms, including quantum-resistant options.

The Ethereum website explicitly states that because accounts choose their own rules, they "could also choose a signature scheme that quantum computers cannot break. This makes Frame Transactions a step toward quantum-resistant security."

Frame Transactions is also rated S-tier (must include). The Ethereum Foundation has said that if either of these two core proposals is at risk, the Hegotá timeline should be adjusted rather than abandoning them.

However, the main challenge for Frame Transactions is not technical feasibility but large-scale ecosystem coordination. It touches the entire tech stack, including clients, wallets, RPC providers, L2s, and developer tools, all of which need to adapt in sync.

Current Status and What to Wait For

The full scope of Hegotá is not yet determined. Besides FOCIL and Frame Transactions, 15 more proposals are classified as A-tier (expected to be included unless development or testing constraints force a reduction in scope), 28 proposals have been outright rejected, and the rest are in B-tier, C-tier, or waiting for mainnet data.

One clear signal comes from Vitalik Buterin. In September 2026, he said Hegotá could be Ethereum's last "normal" fork — after that, the technical direction would shift toward recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, quantum-resistant cryptography, and other areas that would be hard for developers from 2015 to recognize. This does not mean there will be no more hard forks after Hegotá, but rather that the technical nature of upgrades will change.

For readers who want to track progress now, the most reliable sources are the official Ethereum Hegotá roadmap page and EIP-8081 (Hardfork Meta). EIP-8081 continuously updates the list of EIPs "Scheduled for Inclusion" and "Considered for Inclusion," making it the only official document tracking the Hegotá scope.

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