Overview
- The proposal, which was published on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, would change how new validators enter staking by replacing the Merkle-tree deposit flow with execution-request logs tied to EIP-7685.
- The contract design accepts variable-length public keys, signature blobs and metadata and uses scheme identifiers so different cryptographic systems can coexist without picking a single post-quantum algorithm today.
- Authors plan to keep current BLS deposits as Scheme 0 during an initial phase and include a possible irreversible switch to stop new BLS deposits later, while existing BLS keys would need separate migration rules.
- The draft remains unmerged and under technical review and discussion, and it still requires specification work, client implementations, security analysis and selection for a future hard fork before any mainnet change.
- Market participants read the move as a durability signal for Ethereum, producing modestly positive sentiment alongside spot-ETF buying and heavy trader positioning reported on the same day.