Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless
Translation: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
Ethereum has been moving forward steadily.
In March 2024, the network introduced the Dencun upgrade. Dencun is a fusion of “Deneb” and “Cancun”, aimed at significantly reducing L2 transaction costs.
What comes next? Pectra is Ethereum’s next major upgrade, which will be more significant than Dencun.
Pectra is scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter of 2024 or the first quarter of 2025, combining two previously planned upgrades: Prague (for the execution layer) and Electra (for the consensus layer). By merging the two, Pectra aims to bring multiple ambitious improvements to Ethereum, making it more flexible and optimized than ever before.
What does Pectra include?
Pectra is not just a minor upgrade; it is full of updates.
Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) are proposed changes to Ethereum. They ensure that network changes are transparently discussed and agreed upon, involving the community and core developers.
For the Pectra upgrade, the current plan includes 9 standard EIPs and a meta-EIP composed of an additional 11 EIPs.
These EIPs include enhancements to account abstraction, validator operations, and overall network performance. Some of the most notable new features are as follows:
EIP-2537 – Introduces precompiles for BLS 12-381 curve operations, making BLS signature operations faster and cheaper, increasing accessibility and performance for Ethereum validators, and reducing gas costs.
EIP-2935 – Implements storing previous block hashes in a special storage slot to improve efficiency and reliability in verifying Ethereum data before stateless execution.
EIP-7002 – Allows validators to trigger exits and partial withdrawals through their execution layer credentials, providing more flexible options for re-staking and staking pools.
EIP-7251 – Increases the maximum effective balance for Ethereum validators from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, reducing the required number of validators and simplifying the network’s computational load.
EIP-7594 – Introduces Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS) to further optimize L2, enhance transaction processing, and scalability.
EIP-7702 – Adds a new transaction type that allows setting the code of an EOA (Externally Owned Account) during a single transaction, enabling regular wallets to temporarily switch to smart contract wallets for improved user experience.
EIP-7692 – The meta-EIP composed of 11 EIPs aims to enhance the Ethereum Virtual Machine Object Format (EOF) to improve contract deployment and execution efficiency.
A completely improved Ethereum
Post-Pectra era, Ethereum will cater to a wider range of use cases and user needs.
Standard Ethereum accounts will be more programmable, L2 will be more affordable, smart contracts will be more efficient, and validators will manage more flexibly!
With these enhanced features, Ethereum will be better equipped to handle the growing adoption, integrate with other networks, and introduce new features, keeping the platform at the forefront of on-chain innovation.
What comes after Pectra?
While nothing is set in stone yet, the Ethereum community is eyeing the implementation of Verkle trees in the Osaka upgrade following Pectra.
“I’m really looking forward to Verkle trees,” Vitalik said earlier this year. “They will enable stateless validator clients, allowing staking nodes to run on almost zero disk space and sync almost instantly – a better standalone staking user experience.”
Nevertheless, the next upgrades for Ethereum will significantly enhance the chain’s usability for users and developers. Ethereum cannot be built in a day, but taking steady steps towards building the network of the future that Ethereum is striving for is the way to go.
