Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Hegota upgrade, planned for 2027, will likely be the last fork whose features remain recognizable to someone who knew the network in 2015. He framed the recent PeerDAS work as the start of a deeper transition, describing Ethereum's move "from being just a blockchain to being something much more powerful." The comments were reported by Cointelegraph on September 28, 2026.
The claim is less about a single release and more about where the roadmap points after it. Buterin's argument is that the changes still coming through Hegota are extensions of ideas an early user would understand, while the work that follows reshapes the base layer into something structurally different.
The line Buterin is drawing
PeerDAS is the pivot he cites. It lets nodes confirm that data is available by sampling portions of it rather than downloading everything, which lowers the hardware burden of verifying the chain. In Buterin's telling, that sampling approach marks the point where Ethereum stops being a system that simply re-executes every transaction on every node.
Past that line, he expects development to move toward recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, optimized consensus, and quantum-safe cryptography. Those are not user-facing features in the way a gas change or a new opcode is. They change how the network proves things are correct, not just what it does.
The distinction matters because it reframes what an upgrade is. Ethereum's forks have historically added or adjusted mechanics that developers could reason about directly. The next phase, as Buterin describes it, pushes more computation off the base chain and uses that chain mainly to verify results, settle transactions, and hold shared state that everyone can read.
A verifier, not a re-executor
Buterin's phrase for the destination is a "cryptographic world computer." The idea is an architecture that combines a blockchain with cryptographic proofs, privacy tooling, and decentralized offchain components, so that heavy work happens elsewhere and the chain checks the math.
That is a meaningful departure from the mental model most people carry. The common picture of Ethereum is thousands of nodes each running the same code on the same inputs. A proof-centric design keeps the trust guarantees but moves the execution, which is what makes the resulting system hard to recognize from a 2015 vantage point.
No throughput figures or scaling targets were attached to the remarks in the report, so the practical size of the change is not yet quantified here. The framing is directional rather than a specification: a statement about the kind of network Ethereum is becoming, not a benchmark to hold it to.
Reading it without the hype
Buterin has made long-horizon roadmap statements before, and a 2027 target leaves room for scope and timing to shift. Treating "last normal fork" as a hard date would over-read a comment that is really about trajectory. The useful takeaway is that Ethereum's core team is signaling a phase change in how the protocol evolves, from tuning execution toward rebuilding verification.
For anyone building on or holding exposure to the network, the second-order point is stability of the base layer. A design that leans on proofs and offchain computation is aiming for a base chain that changes less often at the level ordinary users touch, even as the machinery underneath grows more advanced. Whether it delivers that is a question for the releases that follow Hegota, not for this announcement.
Card users sit downstream of all this
The people spending ETH or stablecoins through a crypto card are insulated from most of this by design. Card rails read balances and settle transactions; they do not care whether the chain re-executes or verifies a proof, as long as state stays correct and final. A base layer that changes less at the surface is, if anything, the friendlier outcome for payment products built on top.
The longer arc is throughput and cost. Cheaper, faster settlement is the ceiling that decides how practical onchain spending becomes, whether you are funding a card from a self-custody wallet in Germany or topping up from an exchange balance. If the proof-centric roadmap widens that ceiling, the cards that draw directly from wallets benefit most, since they inherit the base layer's economics. For now, that is a downstream effect of work that has barely started, not a near-term change to how any card operates.
Overview
Buterin said the 2027 Hegota fork is likely Ethereum's last upgrade that a 2015-era user would still recognize, with PeerDAS marking the start of a shift toward a proof-based "cryptographic world computer" built on recursive STARKs, quantum-safe cryptography, and automated formal verification. The report attached no throughput numbers, so the framing is directional. For crypto card users, the relevant signal is a base layer that may change less at the surface while its verification machinery is rebuilt underneath, with any spending benefit tied to cheaper settlement that is still years out.
