Ethereum's Hegotá Upgrade May Be Its Last Normal Fork

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has warned that the upcoming Hegotá upgrade may be the last 'normal' fork for Ethereum, as the network prepares to transition towards more radical cryptographic and verification technologies.

In a recent post, Buterin explained that this shift is part of a broader vision to evolve Ethereum from a blockchain that replays computation to a platform he describes as a 'cryptographic world computer.'

This change would allow the network to combine blockchains with cryptographic checking, privacy mechanisms, and decentralized components that can operate offchain, while still relying on Ethereum's base layer to settle and verify outcomes.

Buterin highlighted PeerDAS as an earlier milestone in this transition, which enables nodes to verify data availability by sampling portions of data rather than downloading everything.