Ethereum’s eagerly awaited Pectra upgrade is scheduled for mainnet deployment on May 7th, 2025 at epoch 364032. Pectra also in July of this year builds on the legacy left by past major upgrades like Dencun March 2024. It builds upon 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to improve network performance, scalability, and overall user experience. Originally intended for April 30, the launch was delayed because of technical difficulties faced on the testnet.
This upgrade represents a historic step forward for Ethereum. It even improves Layer 2 (L2) scalability, validator experiences, and groundbreaking features such as EIP-7702 to allow improved transaction handling. The Pectra upgrade continues to push Ethereum to be the best scalable blockchain platform. In the coming months, it will substantially increase transaction throughput and introduce new functionality.
Key Features and Improvements
Today we’ll take a look at the most important improvements the Pectra upgrade delivers to the Ethereum network. The most significant improvement must be the doubling of the average blobs per block. It’s gone up from 3 to 6! This increase in blob capacity will greatly multiply Layer 2 scalability. By helping Ethereum become more efficient, it can now handle a greater number of transactions per second.
Additionally, new EIP-7702 integration adds smart contract functionality to standard Ethereum accounts (EOAs), which are wallets that don’t utilize smart contracts. This design improvement adds new potential for users, making it even more user-friendly.
EIP-7702 enables use cases like transaction batching, gas sponsorship, or social recovery, all without migrating your assets." - Tim
Validator Optimizations and Efficiency
Pectra places emphasis on enhancing the validator experience which increases validator productivity. These improvements will help make the staking process easier and more accessible to new validators seeking to join the network.
It also removes the pre-merge PoW follow distance, shortening the delay to process validator deposits, and introduces execution-layer triggerable withdrawals, which enable more trustless staking constructions." - Tim
With validators being the cornerstone of proof-of-stake Ethereum, maximizing their efficiency will only help the health and stability of the Ethereum network.
Enhancing Scalability
One of the foundational purposes of the Pectra upgrade is to make Ethereum more scalable. Raising the limit on number of blobs-per-block allowed is a three-albums-on-a-hot-summer-day core aspect of this effort.
Raising this limit was in part possible due to another EIP (7623), which bounds the worst-case block sizes on the network!’ - Tim
Pectra increases Ethereum’s transaction throughput dramatically by making blobs bigger and blocks smaller. This method saves time in traffic and reduces transaction costs. The Pectra upgrade is a strategic move, guaranteeing Ethereum will have the competitive advantage it needs to stay ahead in the blockchain race.
