The decision was finalized during the All Core Devs Execution call on December 18, 2025, and confirms Ethereum’s move toward a biannual upgrade cadence aimed at tackling long-term scalability and state growth challenges.
What Is Hegota and Why It Matters
The name Hegota combines Heze (consensus layer) and Bogota (execution layer), underscoring a coordinated upgrade across Ethereum’s core architecture. Rather than focusing on short-term performance boosts, Hegota is designed to address one of Ethereum’s most persistent issues: state bloat.
At the center of the upgrade is the planned introduction of Verkle Trees, a new data structure intended to replace current mechanisms used to store and verify blockchain state. Verkle Trees enable far smaller cryptographic proofs, which fundamentally changes how nodes interact with the network.
This shift opens the door to stateless clients—nodes that can verify Ethereum blocks without storing the full historical state. According to developer estimates discussed during the call, this could reduce node storage requirements by up to 90%, dramatically lowering the cost and complexity of participation.
Decentralization Through Lower Barriers
By shrinking storage and hardware demands, Hegota directly supports Ethereum’s decentralization goals. Running a full node today can be resource-intensive, which limits participation to operators with sufficient infrastructure. Stateless clients would allow more individuals to independently verify the network, strengthening resilience and censorship resistance.
Developers also referenced state expiry mechanisms as a potential complementary feature, further reducing long-term data accumulation and improving sustainability.
How Hegota Fits Into the 2026 Roadmap
Hegota will follow the Glamsterdam upgrade, currently expected in the first half of 2026. Glamsterdam is planned to focus on execution-layer performance, including parallel transaction execution and a higher gas limit, with throughput targets potentially approaching 10,000 transactions per second.
While Hegota’s timing is now confirmed, its final scope is not. Core developers expect to determine which Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) will serve as the upgrade’s “headliners” by February 2026.
A Structural Shift in Ethereum’s Evolution
Taken together, Glamsterdam and Hegota illustrate a clear pattern in Ethereum’s roadmap: faster iteration cycles paired with deeper architectural upgrades. Hegota, in particular, represents a foundational step toward a lighter, more accessible Ethereum, one where verifying the network no longer requires heavyweight infrastructure, but only cryptographic certainty.
