Ethereum research group Ethlabs announced on Wednesday that it is withdrawing its proposal to speed up the network's block production as part of the planned Hegotá upgrade, urging core developers instead to prepare Ethereum against quantum attacks by 2027.

In a forum post published on Ethereum Magicians titled "An Ethlabs view on post-quantum and post-AI timelines (pqai27)," the group outlined a roadmap, dubbed "pqai27," designed to protect Ethereum from threats posed by quantum computing and increasingly capable artificial intelligence. The push reflects a broader industry shift: the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized the first post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024, and governments and companies have begun multi-year migrations away from the public-key algorithms quantum computers could eventually break. According to Ethlabs, the plan is intended to give users a way to protect their accounts by 2027, and upgrades unrelated to that goal should be reconsidered.

The move marks a reprioritization for the group, which had previously backed Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-8198, known as Quick Slots. The proposal would initially cut Ethereum's slot time — the base unit of time in the network's proof-of-stake consensus — from 12 seconds to 10 seconds. Ethlabs said it will redirect resources to pqai27 but still intends to pursue faster slots in 2028.

For Hegotá, Ethlabs said FOCIL, a planned censorship-resistance feature, should proceed only if it does not jeopardize quantum readiness. The group described Frame Transactions, which would enable more flexible account authentication, as central to the proposed transition. That flexibility matters for a migration: post-quantum signature schemes standardized to date produce signatures far larger than the elliptic-curve scheme Ethereum uses today. It added that Glamsterdam, the upgrade preceding Hegotá, should move ahead as planned.

The proposal has not been approved by Ethereum core developers. The Ethereum Foundation's published roadmap still targets December 2029 for quantum resistance. At Devcon, Ethereum's annual developer conference, researcher Justin Drake said he hopes the transition can be completed in 2028.

Quantum resilience has become an increasingly prominent topic in Ethereum's research community, as sufficiently advanced quantum computers could in principle break the cryptographic signatures that currently secure user accounts. Ethlabs argues the network should move faster than the Foundation's current timeline allows. The disagreement now heads into Ethereum's core developer process, where Hegotá's contents remain open to revision: how core developers respond to pqai27 in forum discussion and upcoming upgrade planning will help determine whether FOCIL stays in the upgrade, and how the competing 2027, 2028, and December 2029 timelines are reconciled.