Original author: Francesco
Original translation: Luffy, Foresight News
Ethereum’s next upgrade, Pectra, has taken its first step.
On February 24, the Pectra upgrade was launched on the Holesky testnet; on March 5, Pectra will be launched on the Sepolia testnet.
Once these upgrades are successfully implemented on the testnet, the mainnet upgrade date will be determined, and the mainnet upgrade is expected to take place within 3 to 9 months after the testnet implementation.
Pectra is a fairly significant upgrade that introduces multiple Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) at once:
We can group these upgrades into three key areas:
Improving Ethereum Accounts
Improving the user experience for Ethereum validators
Expanding the processing capabilities of data blobs
Let’s take a deeper look at some of the upcoming Ethereum Improvement Proposals and how they will benefit the Ethereum protocol and users.
Improving Ethereum Accounts: EIP-7702
EIP-7702 brings Ethereum closer to the experience of account abstraction at the protocol level. It does this by extending smart contract functionality for Ethereum’s externally owned accounts (EOAs), including:
Transaction batching: performing multiple operations in one transaction
Gas fee sponsorship: Allow accounts without ETH to be sponsored by others to pay for gas fees
More authentication and recovery mechanisms
Improving the user experience of Ethereum validators: EIP-7251, EIP-7002, EIP-6110
EIP-7251: Increases the maximum validator balance to 2048 ETH and allows for automatic compounding of larger effective staking rewards. Previously, rewards were calculated based on a balance of only 32 ETH. In addition, larger validators can now merge multiple 32 ETH validators into one.
EIP-7002: As long as the execution layer address is set as a withdrawable credential, it is allowed to trigger withdrawal operations, thereby reducing the reliance on trust. Before this, only validators could trigger withdrawal operations.
EIP-6110: Removes the delay of up to 2048 blocks between a validator deposit and being added to the queue. The waiting time is expected to be reduced from 9 hours to 13 minutes.
Expanding the processing capabilities of data blobs: EIP-7691
As the cost of Blobs becomes higher and higher, the need to expand their processing power arises. With EIP-7691, the capacity of Data Blobs will increase by 50%: Currently, each Ethereum block can accommodate an average of about 3 Data Blobs (up to 6 during peak demand). With EIP-7691, the average number of Data Blobs that can be accommodated per block will increase to 6, and will increase to 9 during peak demand.
The next step to further scale Data Blob processing capabilities is to reduce the need to store all Data Blobs and migrate to a subnet that can still be used to verify Data Blob data.
Other EIPs included in the Pectra upgrade
EIP-2537: Increase the number of secure bits for operations from the current 80+ bits to over 120 bits.
EIP-2935: In preparation for the arrival of stateless clients, the proposal proposes storing historical block hashes in the state as part of the block processing logic. By implementing this through contract storage, EIP-2935 allows for a soft transition without affecting the block hash logic. The second layer network will be able to utilize longer historical data and query the storage contract directly.
EIP-7549: This proposal aims to improve the efficiency of Casper clients. It does this by reducing the number of pairings required to verify consensus. Specifically, it removes one of the three elements in the Casper client attestation message: the committee index. By removing this element from the attestation message, consensus votes can now be aggregated into blocks more efficiently, increasing the number of votes in a block from 2 periods to 8 periods.
EIP-7623: The proposal to increase the cost of calling data proposed by EIP-7623 is one of the most impactful upgrades (especially for the second-layer network). The proposal aims to adjust the cost of calling data to address the gap between the average block size (100 kb) and the maximum block size (7.15 MB). This will not affect ordinary users, only those transactions that are mainly used to publish data. The increase in cost will be implemented through a base fee that depends on the proportion of gas fees spent on call data operations: this can be achieved by reducing the block size to accommodate more data blobs or by increasing the gas limit.
EIP-7685: Introduces a framework for storing requests triggered by smart contracts. This allows validators controlled by smart contracts to delegate management operations to smart contracts, reducing the need for middlemen.
EIP-7840: Introduces a method to dynamically adjust the target and maximum number of data blobs per block through the blobSchedule object, instead of passing all values through the API.
This upgrade sends a clear signal from Ethereum. We know that these upgrades have been on the agenda for a long time and are not a response to recent criticism. Nevertheless, the focus of this upgrade on making the Ethereum network more secure, improving Ethereum accounts, and expanding the processing capacity of data blobs is consistent with some of the most important development needs.
