The Ethereum Foundation’s protocol group published a set of priorities on 7 September that names one goal as its north star: making Ethereum quantum-resistant across its execution, consensus and data layers by December 2029. It is the first time the group has laid out a single ordered list for planning the network upgrades, or forks, that get there. The stated cadence works out at about one fork every 7.2 months, and the date lines up with post-quantum migration targets already flagged by Google, Cloudflare and Microsoft.
The next fork, Glamsterdam, is targeted for December 2026. After it comes Hegota, carrying a consensus change called FOCIL and a new execution feature called Frame transactions, then a run of forks the group labels with placeholders. A milestone it calls minimum viable post-quantum is pencilled in several forks out, with the ordering after that point left deliberately open. Formal verification is named as tooling that runs across all of the work.
The machines that could break the elliptic-curve signatures protecting Ethereum wallets do not exist yet, and estimates for when they might arrive run across the 2030s. Committing to a migration timetable before the threat is concrete is the responsible order to do things in. It also means years of consecutive changes to the core protocol of a chain that secures hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Foundation has not said what becomes of coins in wallets whose owners never migrate, or accounts whose keys are lost. A fork every 7.2 months is quicker than Ethereum has managed lately. And December 2029 is a target set by a body that coordinates the client teams and validators who must ship it, rather than commands them.
