Pectra Upgrade

Oct 31, 2024 | Updated Oct 31, 2024

The Pectra upgrade is an upcoming Ethereum network upgrade aimed at improving overall scalability, security, and user experience, including account abstraction and validator operations.

What Is the Pectra Upgrade?

The Pectra upgrade refers to two phases of the upcoming Ethereum upgrade – Prague and Electra. Like the prior Dencun (Cancun-Deneb) upgrade, this upgrade constitutes changes that impact both the consensus layer and the execution layer of Ethereum. It is anticipated to go live in early 2025.

The upgrade aims to increase validators’ stake limit, enhance the efficiency of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and improve Ethereum wallet functionality. It will also reduce gas costs, improve scalability, address the network’s energy consumption concerns, and introduce enhanced development tools to augment the user experience for both developers and users.

What Are the Key Improvements?

The Prague/Electra upgrade consists of a series of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Some of the key improvements include:

EIP-2935: Introduces Verkle trees, a type of data structure designed to optimize the performance of Ethereum nodes and curtail the computational burden on validators by improving the efficiency of storing and retrieving information. In other words, Verkle trees will enable stateless execution, which will eliminate the need to store the blockchain’s entire history, thereby enhancing overall network efficiency.
EIP-3074: This aims to improve the network’s transaction authorization process by introducing method calls (AUTH and AUTHCALL opcodes) to delegate transaction authorization to smart contracts. Ideally, it integrates externally owned accounts (EOAs) with smart contracts via account abstraction to reduce the burden of managing traditional crypto wallets.
EIP-7002: Allows validators to directly use their execution layer credentials to initiate full or partial withdrawals or trigger exits.
EIP-7251: Seeks to increase the maximum amount that a single validator can stake from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH to slow down the rate of growth and decrease the size of the network’s validator set. This aims to enhance the network’s security and reduce the computational burden on individual nodes.
EIP-7594: This improvement introduces the PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) protocol, a networking mechanism that performs data availability checks while only downloading a subset of the data. As a result, it optimizes transaction processing and improves the scalability of layer 2 networks, thereby facilitating cheaper and faster transactions.

Additionally, the upgrade also introduces EIP-7692, a Meta EIP consisting of 11 improvements that focus on enhancing the EVM Object Format (EOF). In other words, EIP-7692 will improve the structure of smart contracts executed on the EVM, optimizing smart contract deployment and execution.