The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is expected to be implemented in the first quarter of 2025. This is the third major upgrade to Ethereum after the Ethereum merger in September 2022 and the Cancun upgrade in March 2024.
At the Ethereum core developer call held on January 9, 2025, Tim Beiko, the lead of the execution layer technical protocol support, suggested that the process of launching Devnet 5, the 5th development network related to the Pactra upgrade, be initiated this week on January 13, and that the Ethereum public test networks Sepoila and Holesky be upgraded in February 2025, with activation on the Mainnet in March 2025.
About the Pectra Upgrade
The Pectra upgrade includes two main parts: the Prague execution layer upgrade and the Electra consensus layer upgrade. The key proposals in this technical upgrade are to enhance account abstraction, optimize validator operations, and continue to improve the performance of the Ethereum network, which also includes optimizing the technical protocols for Layer2, which is an exciting highlight of this Pectra upgrade.
The technical protocols related to the consensus layer upgrade include:
EIP-6110, EIP-7002, EIP-7251, EIP-7549, EIP-7691.
The technical protocols related to the execution layer upgrade include:
EIP-7685, EIP-7623, EIP-7702, EIP-2537, EIP-2935.
How the Pectra Upgrade Improves Ethereum
According to the EIP-7600 Pectra hard fork implementation protocol, the Ethereum improvement protocols currently included in the Pectra upgrade include:
EIP-6110: Using the in-protocol deposit processing mechanism at the consensus layer
When validators deposit ETH, there is no need to rely on the consensus layer's voting mechanism for verification, thereby improving the security of validator operations, even if there are more than two-thirds of adversarial stake. At the same time, this mechanism can reduce the complexity of client software design and reduce operational latency.
EIP-7002: Triggering Withdrawal from the Execution Layer
Allows validators to withdraw by triggering exit and withdrawal through the execution layer.
EIP-7251: Increase MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE
Allows Ethereum staking to exceed 32 ETH, with the minimum staking threshold remaining at 32 ETH. The improvement of this technical protocol aims to allow large node operators to reduce the number of validators in the network by combining multiple validators, thereby reducing the burden of peer-to-peer messaging, signature aggregation, and storage.
EIP-7549: Move Committee Index out of Proofs
Aims to achieve more efficient consensus vote aggregation, reducing verification costs and network load.
EIP-7691: Increase Blob Count
Increase the maximum number of Blobs per block to 6-9, helping Ethereum improve scalability through Layer2 solutions.
EIP-7685: Generic Execution Layer Requests
This proposal defines a generic framework for storing contract-triggered requests, which can simplify the addition of new request types without changing the structure of the Execution Block, ultimately creating a safer system for users.
EIP-7623: Increase the Cost of calldata
Since the implementation of EIP-1599, the limit on Ethereum block Gas fees has not been increased, but the amount of data being published to the Mainnet has been constantly increasing, and the average block size has also been increasing. Since the implementation of EIP-2028, the cost of calldata has not changed, but with the introduction of Blob in EIP-4844, the cost of calldata needs to be re-evaluated to reduce the maximum block data size and free up data space for more Blobs that can help improve block throughput.
EIP-7702: Set EOA Account Code
Adds a new type of tx to provide EOA accounts with code execution capabilities, improving the flexibility and programmability of accounts.
EIP-2537: Precompiles for BLS12-381 Curve Operations
By introducing precompiled contracts, add support for BLS12-381 curve operations to Ethereum, enabling the BLS signature verification algorithm and allowing multiple signatures to be aggregated into one, thereby reducing the complexity of verification.
EIP-2935: Persist Historical Block Hashes in State
By storing the hashes of the most recent 8192 blocks in a system contract, it provides support for the stateless client model and provides more flexible historical block hash query functionality. These hashes can be queried directly through the contract and provided as witnesses to stateless clients.
However, the previously highly anticipated technical proposal EIP-7594 has been on hold for more than 6 months and is not expected to be implemented in the Pectra upgrade. EIP-7594 introduced the Data Availability Sampling (DAS) protocol to ensure Blob data availability when only a subset of the data is downloaded.
