Ethereum To Undergo Major Shift After Hegota Fork, Buterin Says

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published an essay describing how the network will transform after its next major upgrade, calling the result a "cryptographic world computer." 

The

frames Ethereum (

) as moving away from a traditional blockchain model and toward a hybrid system built on advanced cryptography.

Buterin's

centers on the Hegota fork, expected before the end of 2026. He described Hegota as likely to be Ethereum's last "normal" fork, meaning it will still include features that would look familiar to someone using the network in 2015.

Everything planned after Hegota involves a different kind of change, according to the post. Buterin listed recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, more efficient consensus algorithms, and quantum-safe cryptography as the core pieces of this next phase.

He argued that Ethereum has always shared some features with Bitcoin (

), the original blockchain created in 2009. But he said the technology has changed enough that it now makes sense to describe Ethereum as a fundamentally different kind of system. The shift, he wrote, combines original blockchain concepts with cryptographic tools that either did not exist or were not mature when Bitcoin launched.