Pectra upgrade, explained Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade combines two separate upgrades: the Prague upgr
Pectra upgrade, explained
Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade combines two separate upgrades: the Prague upgrade and the Electra upgrade.
The Prague upgrade is focused on changes to the network’s execution layer, with the Electra upgrade impacting the consensus layer. These upgrades, when combined, are collectively referred to as the “Pectra” upgrade.
The Pectra upgrade will follow “Dencun,” an amalgamation of the Deneb and Cancun upgrades, which occurred in March 2024. Dencun was technically an Ethereum hard fork designed to lower transaction fees for layer-2 solutions and improve Ethereum scalability.
Pectra is a new milestone on Ethereum’s development roadmap. Ethereum developer Terence Tsao shared that the Pectra upgrade successfully went live on the Sepolia test network on March 5 at 7:29 am UTC. This marks the completion of its second test phase, achieving a flawless proposal rate.
This success follows a setback last week on the Holesky test network, where a misconfiguration among validators caused a chain split, briefly disrupting the network. Tsao responded to questions about these issues, explaining that it could take at least 18 more days to resolve the Holesky upgrade, as ongoing investigations are focused on problems related to “correlation penalties” and “validator balance drains.”
Test networks like Sepolia and Holesky allow developers to test new upgrades in a controlled environment before applying them to Ethereum’s main network, ensuring that any potential issues are addressed in advance. With the Sepolia test phase complete, Ethereum moves one step closer to deploying Pectra on the mainnet, although Holesky still requires further work to resolve the existing issues.
Ethereum Pectra’s two-stage rollout, explained
The Pectra upgrade for Ethereum introduces crucial improvements, including enhanced scalability and the ability to pay gas fees with stablecoins, with further advancements expected by 2026.
Phase 1: Scheduled for mid-March 2025, this phase includes:
- Doubling layer-2 blob capacity: Increasing the capacity from three to six blobs to reduce transaction fees and network congestion.
- Account abstraction: Allowing gas fees to be paid using stablecoins like USDC (USDC) and Dai (DAI), offering more flexibility to users.
- Increasing validator staking limits: Raising the maximum staking limit from 32 Ether (ETH) to 2,048 ETH to simplify large-scale validator operations.
Phase 2: Expected in late 2025 or early 2026, this phase will introduce:
- Verkle trees: A new data structure combining Vector Commitments and Merkle Trees to enhance data storage efficiency and support the transition toward stateless Ethereum clients.
- Peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS): A system that improves scalability by enabling nodes to verify transaction data without storing the entire data set.
Key highlights of the Ethereum Pectra upgrade
Pectra brings scalability, reduced fees, enhanced security and smart accounts to Ethereum, paving the way for more efficient transactions and future innovations.
- Improved scalability: Pectra brings new mechanisms developed to grow the network’s transaction capacity. In simple terms, this allows Ethereum to execute a higher number of transactions per second. This is an important step to support the rapid increase in decentralized applications (DApps) and participants on the network.
- Reduced transaction fees: Gas fees should decrease thanks to the optimization of data storage and processing. Transactions will become cheaper for users and DApps to encourage further adoption of the Ethereum blockchain.
- Smart accounts: One of the most innovative improvements is the introduction of smart accounts. This makes Ethereum accounts and wallets more flexible. Previously, a user account could only make simple transactions. Smart accounts enable users to execute several transactions simultaneously. It’s a step that is predicted to unlock future possibilities and innovations.
- Enhanced security: Within the upgrades, there are advanced cryptographic techniques that are designed to deliver more security for user data and smart contracts.
Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) included in the Pectra update
The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is the next major update to the Ethereum network, combining changes to both the execution layer (Prague) and the consensus layer (Electra). Pectra introduces 11 key Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that enhance scalability, staking flexibility and user experience.
Let’s understand what these EIPs are:
- EIP-7251 (increase the staking limit): This will raise the maximum validator staking balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. However,…
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