Ethereum Activates Pectra Upgrade, Includes 11 Changes to Improve User Experience, Validator Operations, and L2 Scaling

Ethereum developers activated the Pectra upgrade today at 6:05 AM (ET) in epoch 364032, marking the most significant network update since the "Merge" in 2022. Pectra includes 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at enhancing staking efficiency, user experience, validator operations, and Layer 2 scalability.

This upgrade underwent rigorous testing on the Holesky, Sepolia, and Hoodi testnets, with the successful deployment on the Hoodi testnet paving the way for the mainnet upgrade. Core improvements include EIP-7702 implementing account abstraction, allowing user wallets to execute smart contract logic; EIP-7251 increasing the maximum effective staking limit for validators from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH; and EIP-7691 doubling the throughput of Layer 2 data storage (blob) to reduce transaction costs. Additionally, proposals like EIP-7002 and EIP-6110 further optimize validator operations and network efficiency.

This upgrade lays the groundwork for the future Fusaka upgrade, which will introduce Verkle Trees and PeerDAS technology to achieve greater scalability. (The Block)