After the successful upgrade of Dencun, Ethereum developers plan to launch “Pectra” to bring smart contract functionality to wallets. This article is sourced from Margaux Nijkerk and compiled, translated, and written by the Plain Blockchain team.
(Earlier: Ethereum’s latest ACDE meeting: Dencun upgrade went smoothly! What improvements can we expect in the next Pectra upgrade?)
(Background: Ethereum’s next step: EIP-3074 included in Prague upgrade, bringing three major reforms to smart contracts in wallets)
Following the successful upgrade of Dencun, Ethereum developers are planning the next round of improvements for the blockchain with the launch of “Pectra”, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2024 or early 2025.
After successfully implementing important changes to reduce transaction costs on Layer2 blockchains with the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum developers are now planning the next round of improvements for the blockchain. While the specific details of the upcoming upgrade “Pectra” have not been finalized, developers have previously stated that their goal is to simultaneously work on the next round of upgrades for the chain alongside the release of this upgrade.
“The idea behind Pectra is to try and find a series of relatively quick wins while we prototype bigger changes,” said Tim Beiko, the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol support coordinator, in an interview with CoinDesk’s blockchain podcast “The Protocol”.
Participants of Thursday’s Ethereum All Core Developers EIP-3074 phone meeting (a bi-weekly meeting of the main blockchain developers) indicated that “Pectra” may include Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 3074, which is a set of code changes aimed at improving the user experience (UX) of Ethereum wallets. Specifically, the proposal will allow users to batch process transactions and sign them all at once.
Another major change that may occur with “Pectra” is the increase of the validator’s stake limit 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 every time they stake an additional 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 slow down the rate of new validators entering the system, which could overload the system. EIP 2751 is seen as a way to reduce the operational burden on large stakers, integrate the number of validators on the blockchain, and allow staking providers to reduce resources deployed for staking and validation.
The name “Pectra” is a portmanteau 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, responsible for validating blocks, 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 (previously also including “Shapella”). Ethereum’s naming convention follows the different cities where Devcon, an Ethereum conference, is held for the execution layer, and alphabetical order for star names for the consensus layer.
Other EIPs worth considering include enabling validators to withdraw funds triggered by smart contracts, adding code changes called BLS precompiles, and removing deposit windows. These are relatively minor network changes for developers. The upgrade following “Pectra” will include the highly anticipated “verkle tree” – a new data structure aimed at helping Ethereum nodes store large amounts of data.
According to relevant information, the developers aim to release “Pectra” by the end of 2024 or early 2025. “This will be a relatively small upgrade. The reason for that is it allows us to handle two forks at the same time. We are researching Verkle trees and transitions,” said the developers. “We are doing work in that area, but it takes more than a year. So in the meantime, we have the bandwidth to handle other smaller wins.”
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