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Ethereum developers concluded their final All Core Developers Execution call of 2025 on December 19 by agreeing to name the network’s second major upgrade of 2026 “Hegota,” following the planned “Glamsterdam” hard fork expected in the first half of the year.
Ethereum announced Hegota, its next major upgrade planned for H2 2026.
Hegota focuses on lower hardware requirements via Verkle Trees, gradual cleanup of outdated chain data, and EVM optimizations that make smart contracts faster and cheaper.
The goal is simple: make Ethereum… pic.twitter.com/iQ0m8L2frz
— Yelay (@YieldLayer) December 21, 2025
The naming follows Ethereum’s tradition of combining Devcon host cities and star catalog entries. In this case, “Hegota” draws from the execution-layer “Bogota” (taken from the rescheduled Devcon in Colombia) with the consensus-layer “Heze” star designation. Glamsterdam, was about “Glasgow”, which was the Devcon 2025 location, and “Amsterdam” star. It remains on track for activation by mid-2026, though its full scope, including potential EIP-4844 refinements and execution optimizations, will be finalized at the next ACDE meeting on January 5.
Details of what Hegota will focus on are still hazy. Early planning seems to predict a laser beam on Verkle Trees, an important step toward stateless clients that would dramatically cut storage demands for running nodes. The upgrade is also expected to tackle state and history expiry mechanisms to manage long-term data growth. This is even as Ethereum Foundation has recently highlighted concerns over state bloat, as the network’s stored data continues to expand rapidly, making node operation more resource-heavy and threatening decentralization.
Similarly, developers are insisting on deferred Glamsterdam items, state and history expiry proposals for long-term scalability, and further execution-layer performance tweaks. A headline EIP is not expected until February, leaving room for community input on priorities.
Hegota fits into Ethereum’s now twice-yearly upgrade pattern established in 2025 with Pectra and Fusaka, following Glamsterdam (expected H1 2026) later in the year as part of “The Verge” roadmap phase focused on decentralization and node accessibility.
The gas limit has already doubled to 60 million this year and is slated to hit 80 million after January’s blob parameter fork, with a long-term goal of 180 million by end-2026. If Verkle Trees becomes an Hegota focus as predicted, it would slash storage needs for stateless clients, while state and history expiry proposals tackle growing bloat that makes running nodes more resource-intensive and threatens decentralization. Layer 2 rollups now handle over 92% of transactions, but sustaining L1 health remains massively important for security and validator diversity, as the ecosystem scales.
Ethereum trades at $3,032.45 on December 23, 2025, up by 0.96% over the last 24 hours.
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