Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless
Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
The Ethereum network continues to march 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 comes next? Pectra is Ethereum’s next major upgrade, which will be even more significant 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 these, 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 filled with innovations.
Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) are proposed modifications to Ethereum. They ensure that network changes are discussed and agreed upon transparently, involving the community and core developers.
For the Pectra upgrade, there are currently plans to incorporate 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 include:
– EIP-2537 — Introducing precompiles for BLS 12-381 curve operations, making BLS signature operations faster and cheaper, thus improving accessibility and performance for Ethereum validators while reducing gas costs.
– EIP-2935 — Implementing storing previous block hashes in special storage slots to improve efficiency and reliability in verifying Ethereum data before stateless execution.
– EIP-7002 — Allowing validators to trigger exits and partial withdrawals through their execution layers, providing more flexible options for re-staking and staking pools.
– EIP-7251 — Increasing 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 — Introducing Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS) to further optimize L2, enhance transaction processing, and scalability.
– EIP-7702 — Adding a new transaction type to set the code of an EOA (Externally Owned Account) during a transaction, allowing regular wallets to temporarily transform into smart contract wallets for an improved user experience.
– EIP-7692 — A meta EIP composed of 11 EIPs, aimed at enhancing the EVM Object Format (EOF) to improve contract deployment and execution efficiency.
A newly improved Ethereum
Post-Pectra era, Ethereum will cater to 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 the growing adoption, integrate with other networks, and introduce new functionalities, 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 post-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 on almost zero disk space and sync nearly instantly – a better standalone staking user experience.”
With each successive upgrade, Ethereum significantly improves its usability for users and developers. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but taking steady steps in building towards the future of what Ethereum is striving to achieve remains the key.
Interpreting Pectra Ethereums Next Upgrade