The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol Cluster has published a new roadmap targeting a fully quantum-resistant Ethereum layer 1 by December 2029. The commitment covers all three major parts of the network’s base layer: execution, consensus, and data.
In a post published on September 7, the Foundation said it is preparing for the possibility that sufficiently powerful quantum computers could emerge as early as 2030, while noting that most credible estimates place the so-called Q-day later than 2030. “Q-day cannot be scheduled, so we have assigned ourselves a self-imposed deadline,” the Protocol Cluster stated. The December 2029 target will remain effectively non-negotiable until at least January 2027, when the Foundation plans to reassess developments with outside experts.
The quantum-resistance roadmap includes post-quantum signature schemes and changes across Ethereum’s transaction, consensus, and data-availability systems. Ethereum’s upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade is expected in December 2026. Under one version of the roadmap, full post-quantum readiness would arrive five hard forks later; another path would bring Ethereum to a minimum viable quantum-resistant milestone at a slower 12-month cadence.
Alongside the long-term security target, the Foundation named two “must ship” proposals for the Hegotá upgrade, which will follow Glamsterdam. The first, FOCIL (EIP-7805), strengthens censorship resistance by allowing a validator committee to force inclusion of valid transactions from the public mempool. The second, Frame Transactions (EIP-8141), brings native account abstraction and post-quantum authentication to Ethereum by splitting transactions into programmable parts for validation, gas payment, and execution.
The Protocol Cluster evaluated 62 Ethereum Improvement Proposals with input from about 60 researchers and engineers, marking the first time it has published a single unified ranking rather than separate opinions from individual teams. FOCIL and Frame Transactions were placed in the S-tier. Beyond those, 15 proposals landed in the A-tier and are expected to ship unless development constraints force cuts, while eight more are candidates, seven are below the line but not ruled out, and 28 were declined for inclusion.
The Foundation said Hegotá is not itself the post-quantum fork, but the upgrade that keeps future post-quantum forks on schedule. Reaching the December 2029 target from Glamsterdam would require an average pace of 7.2 months per fork, leaving little room for error. Client teams could begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026 once Glamsterdam is complete.
Ethereum’s last major upgrade, Fusaka, went live on December 3, 2025, changing how nodes handle rollup data and increasing data capacity for layer-2 networks. The Foundation views post-quantum readiness as one of five multi-fork research arcs for the Ethereum protocol, alongside fast finality, privacy, state, and zkEVM. The 2029 target aligns with migration timelines from Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft.
