On Thursday’s consensus-layer call, ACDC #191, Ethereum developers withdrew shorter 10-second slots from Hegotá, the upgrade after Glamsterdam, and moved a proposal to register post-quantum keys early to “proposed for inclusion”, EtherWorld reported. Many developers wanted the roadmap reprioritised toward post-quantum code, according to Christine D. Kim’s call notes.

The rundown

  • What changed: Barnabé Monnot, an author of the Quick Slots proposal (EIP-8198), wrote in the call’s GitHub thread that “we are withdrawing quick slots from Hegotá”. EIP-8198 would have cut the slot, the 12-second block interval, to 10 seconds. The call’s agenda also asked developers to advance EIP-8483, which EtherWorld says would let validators and others register post-quantum keys before the network switches to them.
  • Why it matters: Today’s signatures could one day be broken by a large quantum computer, so changing them takes years of coordination. EtherWorld reports developers agreed to drop the plan for a consensus design built on current BLS signatures and aim at post-quantum designs directly. Kim says most developers rated the threat between level 2 and 3 on the urgency slide shown on the call.
  • Where it breaks: “Proposed for inclusion” is a first filter, not a commitment, and EtherWorld calls EIP-8483 an initial scoping decision. A decision on whether inclusion lists, Hegotá’s censorship-resistance headliner, work with post-quantum signatures was put off to a later call. Glamsterdam, the upgrade before it, still has open issues: developers deferred a payload-validation change, and EtherWorld reports that testing found oversized, invalid payloads could keep execution clients busy for up to 12 seconds, the length of a slot.
  • By the numbers: EtherWorld says developers set January 2027 as the production-readiness target for LeanVM, a research project central to the post-quantum work, with formal audits from 1 Feb 2027. The next consensus call, ACDC #192, is set for 26 Nov.

Those timelines are targets, not mainnet dates. For how a quantum attack would work on bitcoin, see what a quantum attack on bitcoin would involve. For where Glamsterdam stands, see Ethereum’s Glamsterdam Hoodi test call-off.

Read the call’s agenda and comments on GitHub.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.