Ethereum devs activate Pectra upgrade on Sepolia testnet in last phase before mainnet rollout

Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade was activated on the Sepolia testnet today at around 2:30 am ET.

Sepolia tests the upgrade’s features under simulated network conditions before deployment on Ethereum’s mainnet.

The Sepolia release is the final major rollout before the upgrade launches on the mainnet, expected to occur next month.

This deployment marks Pectra's second phase of testnet activations following its rollout on the Holesky testnet on Feb. 24. 

Sepolia follows a rocky rollout on Holesky, where an issue with incorrect deposit contract addresses in execution clients caused chain splits and delayed finality. However, developers addressed the issue and are working to stabilize the network. Despite the Holesky setbacks, the Ethereum team decided to proceed with the Sepolia rollout as scheduled today.

The Pectra upgrade, named as a combination of “Prague” (execution layer changes) and “Electra” (consensus layer updates), introduces several changes aimed at improving Ethereum’s scalability.

Developers are expected to finalize a mainnet activation date during Thursday's All Core Developers (ACD) call. A potential mainnet fork on Ethereum is targeted for early April.

The Pectra upgrade builds on the March 2024 Dencun hard fork , which reduced Layer 2 fees and represents Ethereum’s continued efforts to stay competitive.

Pectra introduces various improvements to boost Ethereum’s scalability, security and usability. Key changes include improvements to the user experience in crypto wallets and account abstraction through EIP-7702 , raising the upper limit for validator stakes from 32 to 2,048 ETH via EIP-7251 , and increasing the maximum blob count to advance rollup scalability through EIP-7691 .