Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade Goes Live on April 30 – Here’s What to Expect

Following a successful deployment on the Hoodi testnet, developers are gearing up to launch the Pectra upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet in the next 32 days.

According to a tweet by Ethereum developer Terence Tsao, the Pectra upgrade is scheduled to go live on April 30, pending full confirmation at the next developers’ meeting. This announcement comes after several months of planning and will become one of the network’s major upgrades in history.

What to Expect

The Pectra upgrade, which represents a fusion of Ethereum’s execution and consensus layers, Prague and Electra, seeks to incorporate significant Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that will make the second-largest blockchain more scalable, user-friendly, and efficient.

It involves 11 EIPs, but the new features that stand out include smart contract functionality for wallets, enhanced staking capabilities, account abstraction, privilege management, and the ability to sponsor transaction fees. Also, Pectra will introduce the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Object Format, enhancing the EVM code for later-1 and layer-2 functionalities.

After Pectra is deployed on Ethereum, developers can build features that allow users to pay transaction fees in cryptocurrencies other than ether (ETH) and validators to stake up to 2,048 ETH, exceeding the current 32 ETH limit. This staking adjustment will benefit large entities managing multiple validators while enabling smaller validators to receive compounding rewards.

Additionally, externally owned accounts, which are those controlled by Ethereum users and not code, can begin to act like smart contracts during transactions, allowing the sponsorship of transaction fees and batching transactions. Interestingly, the upgrade will implement a Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS) feature that will slash costs for layer-2 networks, allowing nodes to verify large data availability without full download.

Date Not Certain Yet

Notably, developers could change the date for the Pectra upgrade if issues are detected on the Hoodi testnet within the next 30 days. These extra measures are being taken because the upgrade failed to finalize properly while being deployed on the Holesky and Sepolia testnets weeks ago.

They are closely monitoring the Hoodi testnet, which was created after Holesky and Sepolia faced technical challenges and synchronization issues. If complications arise while Pectra runs on Hoodi, developers may postpone the deployment on Ethereum until May or June.