Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter has proposed two key transaction changes for the 2027 Hegotá upgrade: Frame Transactions (EIP-8141) and FOCIL (EIP-7805). The proposal aims to grant privacy protocols the ability to operate autonomously on the network. Through the introduction of a new programmable transaction format, digital wallets now gain greater control over validation, execution, and gas fee payment mechanisms.
For a privacy pool, this technical capability breaks the long-standing dependency on relayers. The built-in gas fee payment feature allows the pool to cover its own transaction costs without involving third-party intermediaries. This step closes one of the biggest loopholes in the crypto privacy system, considering that the role of relayers in processing transactions has often been a point of vulnerability that can leak sensitive user data to external parties.
Preventing Monopolistic Practices by Block Builders
Privacy data protection will not be fully functional if transactions end up censored by the system. FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) is designed to address this censorship issue by allowing a validator committee to publish a list of transactions that block builders are required to include. If a block is intentionally built without including transactions from that inclusion list, attesters have the right to reject it immediately.
This mechanism is intentionally designed to protect user transaction access from monopolistic practices by large-capacity block builders. In the package structure proposed by Wahrstätter, Frame Transactions and FOCIL are combined with two other proposals, namely EIP-8272 and EIP-7906. Proposal EIP-8272 includes the Keyed Nonces function so that each account can maintain a separate transaction order, as well as Recent Roots so that each transaction can reference the latest Ethereum data state without relying on fixed blocks. To complement them, EIP-7906 (Transaction Assertions) provides a way for wallets to specify requirements for specific conditions that must be fully met when a transaction begins processing.
The Future of Hegotá Among a Stack of 66 Proposals
The push to strengthen privacy infrastructure at the protocol level is closely tied to the recent legal context. Although the United States Department of the Treasury officially lifted sanctions against the Tornado Cash protocol in March 2025, one of the project’s co-founders, Roman Storm, was still found guilty of charges of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in August 2025.
The implementation of the entire EIP proposal package proposed by Wahrstätter must still go through a rigorous screening process. Currently, the Hegotá upgrade has gathered 66 proposals in the discussion phase, and it is certain that not all of them will make it to the final draft. FOCIL is the only EIP that has been officially scheduled for Hegotá so far. The fate of EIP-8141 itself is still under consideration, awaiting the results of a comparison with EIP-8130 before developers make a final implementation decision. The launch of Hegotá itself will only take place after the network completes the Glamsterdam upgrade before the end of 2026, which focuses centrally on Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation and Block-Level Access Lists.
Reported from crypto.news.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
