Following the successful upgrade of Dencun, Ethereum developers plan to launch “Pectra,” bringing smart contract-like functionality to wallets. This article is sourced from Margaux Nijkerk and compiled, translated, and written by the Plain Blockchain team.
(Background: Ethereum’s latest ACDE meeting: Dencun upgrade went smoothly! What improvements will the next Pectra upgrade bring?)
Ethereum developers are planning the next round of improvements to the blockchain after the successful Dencun upgrade, which implemented significant changes to reduce transaction costs on Layer2 blockchains. Although the specific details of the next upgrade, Pectra, have not been finalized, developers have stated that their goal is to simultaneously work on the next round of upgrades while launching Pectra.
“The idea behind Pectra is to try and find a series of relatively quick wins while we’re still prototyping larger-scale changes,” said Tim Beiko, Protocol Support at the Ethereum Foundation, in an interview with CoinDesk’s blockchain podcast “The Protocol.”
During Thursday’s Ethereum Core Developers’ phone call (a bi-weekly meeting of blockchain’s main developers), participants mentioned that Pectra may include Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 3074, a set of code changes aimed at improving the user experience (UX) of Ethereum wallets. Specifically, this proposal would allow users to batch process transactions and sign them all at once.
Another major change that could occur in Pectra is raising the staker’s deposit cap from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, a 64-fold increase. This proposal, called EIP-7251, would allow large staking providers like Coinbase or Lido to integrate their validators operating on the Ethereum blockchain, avoiding the constant creation of new validators with each additional deposit of 32 ETH.
According to data from “Dune Analytics,” there are currently over one million validators operating on the Ethereum network, raising concerns about excessive congestion. Developers have been looking for ways to mitigate the speed of new validators entering the system, which could overload the system. EIP 2751 is seen as a method to alleviate the operational burden for large stakers, integrate the number of validators on the blockchain, and allow staking providers to reduce the resources deployed for staking and validation.
The name “Pectra” is a combination of two upgrades happening simultaneously on different layers of the blockchain. The execution layer, where protocol rules are executed, will undergo the “Prague” upgrade, while the consensus layer, ensuring blocks are verified, will undergo the “Electra” upgrade.
Ethereum developers are known for their combined upgrades, such as the previous “Dencun” upgrade, which included the simultaneous Deneb and Cancun upgrades (with “Shapella” before that). Ethereum’s naming convention follows different cities where Devcon, a conference for the execution layer, is held, while for the consensus layer, it follows the names of stars in alphabetical order.
Other EIPs worth considering include triggering validator withdrawals through smart contracts, adding code changes called BLS precompiles, and canceling the deposit contract. These are relatively minor network changes for developers. The upgrade following Pectra will include the highly anticipated “verkle tree,” a new type of data structure aimed at helping Ethereum nodes store large amounts of data.
According to related information, the developers aim to launch Pectra by the end of 2024 or early 2025. “This will be a relatively small upgrade. The reason for that is that it allows us to work on two forks at the same time. We are researching Verkle trees and the transition,” developers said. “We’re doing the work, but it will take more than a year. So, during this time, we have the bandwidth to handle other smaller victories.”