The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is expected to be implemented in the first quarter of 2025. This is the third major upgrade of Ethereum, following the Ethereum merger in September 2022 and the Cancun upgrade in March 2024.

In the Ethereum core developer conference call held on January 9, 2025, Tim Beiko, head of execution layer technical protocol support, suggested that on January 13 This week the 5th phase of the development network (Devnet 5) process for Pactra upgrade will be launched, and Ethereum’s public testnets Sepoila and Holesky will be upgraded in February 2025, 2025 Activated on the mainnet in March of this year.

About Pectra upgrade

Pectra upgrade consists of two main parts: Prague execution layer upgrade and Electra consensus layer upgrade. The key proposals in this technical upgrade are to enhance account abstraction, optimize validator operations, and continue to improve the performance of the Ethereum network. It also includes the optimization of Layer2 technical protocols, which are also the highlights of this Pectra upgrade worth looking forward to.

Technical protocols related to consensus layer upgrade include:

EIP-6110, EIP- 7002, EIP-7251, EIP-7549, EIP-7691.

Technical agreements related to execution layer upgrade include:

EIP-7685, EIP-7623, EIP-7702, EIP-2537, EIP-2935.

How the Pectra upgrade will improve Ethereum

According to EIP- 7600 Pectra hard fork process implementation protocol. Ethereum improvement protocols that have been included in the Pectra upgrade include:

EIP-6110: Use the in-protocol deposit processing mechanism on the consensus layer

When a validator deposits ETH, there is no need to rely on the voting mechanism of the consensus layer for verification, thereby improving the security of the validator's operation. Even if there are more than two-thirds of hostile equity pledges, honest nodes can Response. At the same time, this mechanism can reduce the complexity of client software design and reduce operation latency

EIP-7002: Trigger extraction from the execution layer (Withdrawal. )

Allow validators to pull through the execution layer, and credentials trigger exits and pulls.

EIP-7251: Add MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE

Ethereum is allowed to pledge more than 32 ETH. The minimum pledge threshold has not changed and is still 32. ETH. ​​Improvements to this technical protocol are designed to allow large node operators to reduce the number of validators in the network by merging multiple validators, thereby reducing peer-to-peer messaging, signature aggregation and storage burdens

EIP-7549: Move the Committee Index out of the proof

Aims to achieve more efficient consensus vote aggregation and reduce verification Cost and network load

EIP-7691: Increase the number of Blobs

Increase the number of Blobs in each block to up to 6~9 to help Ethereum improve through Layer2 solutions Extensibility.

EIP-7685: Generic execution layer requests

The proposal defines a general framework for storing contract trigger requests, which can simplify the addition of new request types without changing the structure of the execution block (Execution Block), ultimately creating a more secure system for users.

EIP-7623: Increase the cost of calldata

Self Since the implementation of the EIP-1599 proposal, the Ethereum block Gas fee limitThe system has not increased, but the amount of data released to the main network has continued to increase, and the average size of blocks has also continued to increase. Since the implementation of EIP-2028, the cost of calldata has not changed, but after the introduction of Blobs in EIP-4844, it is necessary Reevaluate the cost of calldata to reduce the data size of the largest block to free up data space for more blobs that can help improve block throughput.

EIP-7702: Set EOA account code

Add new type tx for EOA Accounts add code execution capabilities to increase account flexibility and programmability.

EIP-2537: Precompilation of BLS12-381 curve operations

By introducing precompilation Contracts (Precompiles) add support for BLS12-381 curve operations to Ethereum, which can implement encryption algorithm BLS signature verification and allow multiple signatures to be aggregated into one signature, thereby reducing the complexity of verification.

EIP-2935: Save historical block hashes in state

By storing the latest 8192 block hashes in the system contract, it provides support for the stateless client model and provides a more flexible historical block hash query function. These hashes can be queried directly through the contract and provided to stateless clients as witness bundles.

However, the technical proposal EIP-7594, which received more attention in the early days, has been suspended from updates for more than 6 months and is not expected to be implemented in the Pectra upgrade. EIP-7594 introduces the Data Availability Sampling (DAS) protocol to ensure that blob data is available when only a subset of the data is downloaded.