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May 27, 2024

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Ethereum core developers said they’re targeting the Pectra upgrade to go live by the first quarter of 2025, they revealed during a live-streamed execution layer meeting on May 23.

Pectra is Ethereum’s next major upgrade following the Dencun upgrade, which rolled out on March 13. The name is a portmanteau of two simultaneous upgrades happening on differing layers of the blockchain, namely “Prague” and “Electra.”  

The upgrade will incorporate the Ethereum Virtual Machine Object Format (EOF), consisting of 11 improvement proposals that enhance the EVM code on both layer-1 and layer-2 levels.

Developers will also include EIP-7251, or “increase max effective balance,” into Pectra. This move will allow individual validators to stake more than the maximum limit of 32 Ether (ETH), with a maximum of 2,048 ETH. Raising the maximum effective validator balance would allow such operators to manage fewer but higher-stake validators, potentially reducing complexity.

Increasing the limit on the maximum effective validator balance could streamline operations for validator operators. They could potentially oversee a smaller number of validators with larger stakes, thus simplifying their management processes.

Additionally, the Ethereum team plans to replace the account abstraction EIP-3074 with EIP-7702.

Proposed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, the new proposal will bring a novel transaction type that enables the network’s account addresses to function as smart contract wallets during transactions temporarily, after which return to their original state.

Elsewhere, the Ethereum Foundation, an organization that supports the Ethereum blockchain and its related technologies, will establish a policy on conflicts of interest after two of their researchers accepted paid advisor positions at Ethereum staking protocol EigenLayer, a move that ignited community debate over potential biases and the need for transparency.