Ethereum developers have officially set a test date for Pectra, their first network upgrade in 11 months, to understand the potential release in April.
Pectra includes a variety of improvements that focus specifically on wallets and validators, but during a period of growing scrutiny for Ethereum. Ethereum has recently been putting pressure on the community to focus and keep up with its competitors.
Ethereum's core builders decided on Thursday during biweekly “all core developers” calls to begin testing Pectra on Holesky's testnet on February 26th.
If these tests are successful, the developer will reconference on March 6th to determine when the upgrade will officially launch. According to Tim Beiko, the protocol support lead for the Ethereum Foundation, developers are hoping that the upgrade will hit MainNet in early April.
Pektra will be live
Holesky forks in slot 3710976 (Mon, February 24th 21:55:12 UTC)
Sepolya forks in slot 7118848 (Wed, March 5th 07:29:36 UTC)Assuming Sepolia goes smoothly, we'll select the mainnet slot in the ACD call on March 6th 📅
– Timbeiko.eth (@timbeiko) February 6, 2025
Pectra – Portmanteau, which represents two separate upgrades of Prague and Electra, includes eight major improvements to the second largest blockchain. The most planned is EIP-7702, which is supposed to improve the user experience of crypto wallets. This idea is part of a broader blockchain trend called account abstraction, and covers a set of features that will make wallet use clunky (for example, users can use gas pricing in currencies other than ETH). (You can pay for that). In this case, the address of the EtherUem (including most user-controlled crypto wallets), known as the Externally Owned Account (EOAS), is reconfigured to support smart contract functionality, allowing wallet developers to qualify for a variety of qualities. Open the door to provide users.
Another major Pectra feature, the EIP-7251, allows the Valtter to increase the amount that can be wagered between 32 and 2,048 ETH. This change should help large validators integrate node operations (currently, multiple nodes must be used to stain more than 32 ETH). It also helps to speed up the setup process for new nodes. Today's systems have led to a few weeks of queues for validators to spin up new infrastructure.
The Ethereum community has been facing an identity crisis over the past few weeks. Its native token, Ether (ETH), has performed poorly against other cryptocurrencies, and networks of competitors like Solana have drawn attention and talent from the Ethereum ecosystem. In the controversy, much of it is directed at the Etherum Foundation, which has coordinated chain upgrades and is currently undergoing a major leadership shuffle.
Read more: Ethereum Developers Will Schedule a “Pectra” Upgrade Finally
