Ethereum, presented as the most commercial blockchain existing, should undergo a significant upgrade in the coming days. Nicknamed “Pectra”, the upgrade aims to improve the efficiency, stability and conviviality of Ethereum. Initially, the upgrade was to be completed at the beginning of early April, however, due to current tests on upgrading its deployment, it was pushed by a few days. According to Tim Beiko, which organizes the basic protocol meetings for Ethereum, the upgrade could be completed by April 30.
The introduction of Pectra to Ethereum will improve the blockchain’s ability to increase accounts and modernize the experience of its validators, according to an official blog from Ethereum. It will also expand the Ethereum scalability range for layer 2 blockchains taken care of such as arbitrum, base and polygon among others.
Some key strengths
With Pectra, Ethereum users will be able to replace traditional accounts controlled by private key with programmable intelligent contracts for greater flexibility and security. This will make in particular the “account abstraction” features of Ethereum.
Explaining functionality, Ethereum said that it represented “a major step towards the generalized abstraction of accounts, allowing users to improve their accounts (EOA) outdoors with intelligent contract features.
“This hybrid approach combines the simplicity of the EOA with the programmability of contractual accounts,” says the blog post.
Thanks to functionality, users will be able to perform several operations in a single transaction. This will eliminate the need to execute separate transactions for transactions approvals and the exchange of tokens.
Another important characteristic that will come with Pectra is the “gas sponsorship”. Essentially, users will be able to treat gas costs payments via other cryptographic token instead of only accepting ETH tokens.
For network validators, Pectra will introduce profitable rewards. “Pectra raises the maximum balance that a validator can receive rewards from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, thanks to an opt-in update of withdrawal identification type. For the smallest stakers, this allows you to reward automatically.
Beiko has published more details on the next upgrade on X.
EIPS 6110, 7002 and 7251 Improve the UX validator by removing the delay between deposits on the EL and CL queue (an artifact POW), allowing EL addresses to trigger withdrawals (reduced confidence hypotheses) and increase in the maximum assessment of validators (composition of rewards!) pic.twitter.com/x5pyamjagr
– Timbeiko.eth (@timbeiko) February 14, 2025
The word “pectra” was explained as the Prague combination, the site of Devcon IV and Electra, a giant white-white star in the constellation of the bull. His testt was activated on February 24.
Previous Ethereum upgrades
In March 2024, Ethereum had undergone the Dencun upgrade. It aimed to reduce the expenses of layer 2 networks supported by Ethereum.
Before that, Ethereum had completed its Shanghai upgrade in April 2023. This upgrade started to allow validators to remove their ETH tokens marked on the POS network.
In 2022, Ethereum saw one of its largest upgrades when its consensus went from a mechanism of evidence of high energy intensity (POW) to proof of ecological participation (POS). This upgrade was called “fusion”.
