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Ethlabs Withdraws Hegotá Quick Slots Proposal, Urges Ethereum Quantum Readiness by 2027
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Ethlabs withdraws Hegotá block-speed proposal. Urges developers to prioritize post-quantum and AI-hardened security by 2027.
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Ethlabs withdraws Quick Slots
Ethereum research group Ethlabs said it will withdraw its proposal to speed up block production from the planned Hegotá upgrade and instead urge core developers to prepare Ethereum for quantum attacks by 2027. Ethlabs outlined “pqai27,” a roadmap it says aims to protect Ethereum against threats from quantum computing and increasingly capable artificial intelligence, and it said unrelated upgrades should be reconsidered. Ethlabs previously backed Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-8198, known as Quick Slots, which would initially cut Ethereum’s slot time from 12 seconds to 10 seconds, but Ethlabs said it will redirect resources away from that Hegotá-linked change.
Ethlabs said it will still pursue faster slots in 2028, and it said Glamsterdam, the upgrade before Hegotá, should proceed as planned. Ethlabs also said FOCIL, a planned censorship-resistance feature, should proceed only if it does not jeopardize quantum readiness, and it called Frame Transactions central to the proposed transition.
Two-stage readiness and tradeoffs
Ethlabs framed its pqai27 target as “pqai27,” and it described post-quantum as cryptography a large quantum computer could not break while it described post-AI as security built around fewer mathematical assumptions and client software hardened against models that find bugs at scale. Ethlabs said it split its own target into two levels, with “Reduced capacity” tied to the idea that post-quantum signatures are larger than today’s and would cost more to include. Ethlabs said blobs are not post-quantum either, and it said that in an emergency rollups would fall back to posting their data as calldata inside ordinary blocks, which it said could absorb today’s blob volume at a higher price.
Ethlabs said the chain would keep running, just not cheaply, and it described the ready level as a compressed timeline rather than a new deadline. Ethlabs said the Ethereum Foundation had already pulled its post-quantum target forward from 2029 to 2028, and it said it wants readiness a year earlier still with full-scale operation treated as a bonus if it can be reached in the same year.
Core developers have not approved
Ethereum core developers have not approved Ethlabs’ proposal, and the Ethereum Foundation’s published roadmap still targets December 2029 for quantum resistance across the network’s execution, consensus and data layers. At Devcon, researcher Justin Drake said he hopes to complete the transition in 2028, while Ethlabs said it still supports faster block production and intends to pursue the improvement in 2028. Ethlabs said it wants core developers to reorder Hegotá around post-quantum and “post-AI” security as the organising goal for 2027, and it said the withdrawal changes nothing on the roadmap until the core developer process adopts it.
“Ethereum core developers have not approved the proposal.”
The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol cluster published its assessment of Hegotá candidates on 7 September and gave Quick Slots a B grade from research teams and a D from engineering teams, with engineering teams objecting to the knock-on changes a shorter slot triggers across the consensus layer. Ethlabs said it had worked through part of the stabilisation list and reported that by its 14th week the Quick Slots feature specification had been merged, but it said the proposal is off the Hegotá list for now.