Authored by William M. Peaster, Bankless
Translated by Deng Tong, Golden Finance
Ethereum has always been moving forward.
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 will happen next? Pectra is Ethereum’s next major upgrade, and it will be more important than Dencun.
Pectra is planned to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2024 or the first quarter of 2025, combining two previously planned upgrades: Prague (for execution layer) and Electra (for consensus layer). By merging them, 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 packed with updates.
Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) are proposed modifications to Ethereum. They ensure that network changes are discussed and agreed upon transparently, involving both the community and core developers.
For the Pectra upgrade, there are currently plans to include 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 additions are as follows. EIP-2537 introduces a precompile for BLS12-381 curve operations, making BLS signature operations faster and cheaper, thereby improving accessibility and performance for Ethereum validators, and reducing gas costs. EIP-2935 implements storing the hash value of the previous block in a special storage slot to enhance the efficiency and reliability of verifying Ethereum data before stateless execution. EIP-7002 allows validators to trigger exits and partial withdrawals through their execution layer withdrawal 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 can set the code of an EOA (Externally Owned Account) during a transaction, allowing regular wallets to temporarily convert to smart contract wallets to improve user experience. EIP-7692, a 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
After the Pectra era, Ethereum will meet a wider range of use cases and user needs.
Regular 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 growing adoption, integrate with other networks, and introduce new features, keeping the platform at the forefront of on-chain innovation. What will happen 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 stated earlier this year. “They will enable stateless validator clients, allowing staking nodes to run with almost zero disk space and sync almost instantly – a better standalone staking user experience.”
Regardless, Ethereum’s next upgrades 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.
