Ethereum developers are deciding whether the blockchain's next major upgrade should make it easier to build private transactions without relying on middlemen — one of 66 proposals now being weighed for the Hegotá upgrade, expected to ship in 2027 after this year's Glamsterdam release.

The Frame Transactions Package

The centerpiece is Frame Transactions, or EIP-8141, which would let an account define how a transaction is approved, executed, and paid for, rather than forcing every user through the same setup. For an ordinary user, that could mean a wallet where someone else covers the fee, several actions bundled into one payment, or transaction-approving cryptography that changes without moving to a new account.

Two accompanying proposals handle what breaks when many people transact privately through the same account:

  • Keyed Nonces (EIP-8250): lets transactions use separate counters instead of queueing behind a single one, so a delayed transaction no longer holds up everything behind it
  • EIP-8272: lets a transaction prove itself against a recent cryptographic record without depending on information that might change while it waits

Together, the three would remove some of the outside infrastructure that privacy applications currently need. Private payment systems on Ethereum can already hide information using cryptographic proofs, but getting those transactions on-chain takes extra infrastructure — and some designs route users through relayers, outside services that submit transactions on their behalf.

What Ethereum Won't Become

Ethereum itself would not become private under the proposal. Sending ETH between two normal addresses would remain as visible as it is today. The hiding would still be done by applications, which would simply need less outside machinery to do it.

Toni Wahrstätter, an Ethereum Foundation researcher and co-author of the proposal, laid out the case as developers began narrowing Hegotá's scope: over the next few core dev calls, the 66-proposal list will be narrowed to the EIPs that get implementations, devnets, testnets, and a realistic chance of shipping in 2027.

FOCIL Is the Only Approval So Far

Only one change has been approved for Hegotá so far: FOCIL, a censorship-resistance measure that lets a group of network operators compile a list of transactions that must be included in a block — taking the inclusion decision away from any single block builder.

Frame Transactions, by contrast, is marked only as "considered for Hegotá," which falls short of approval. Its fate will be decided in the coming developer meetings as the upgrade's scope narrows.