Ethereum Pectra Upgrade Goes Live, Enhancing Scalability and User Experience

On May 7, 2025, Ethereum successfully activated its Pectra upgrade, a major hard fork combining the Prague execution layer and Electra consensus layer updates, marking the most significant network enhancement since the 2022 Merge. The Pectra upgrade introduces 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), delivering smarter wallets, improved staking flexibility, and enhanced layer-2 scalability. The upgrade aims to make Ethereum more user-friendly, efficient, and competitive in the blockchain space.

Details of the Pectra Upgrade

The Pectra upgrade, activated at epoch 364032 (block height 364032, UTC 10:05:11), implements key EIPs that transform Ethereum’s functionality. Notable features include:

• EIP-7702: Account Abstraction: Proposed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, this EIP allows externally owned accounts (EOAs) to temporarily function as smart contracts, enabling features like batch transactions, gas payments in ERC-20 tokens (e.g., USDC, DAI), and third-party fee sponsorship. This reduces user friction, simplifies wallet interactions, and enhances DeFi and dApp usability.

• EIP-7251: Increased Staking Limits: The maximum validator stake rises from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, allowing large-scale stakers to consolidate nodes, reducing network overhead and improving efficiency. Tim Beiko, the protocol support lead at the Ethereum Foundation, commented:“This means that small operators can compound their stake directly, while large ones can consolidate validators to reduce bandwidth use on the p2p network.”

• EIP-7691: Blob Throughput Increase: Building on the Dencun upgrade’s EIP-4844, this EIP doubles blob capacity from three to six per block (maximum nine), lowering layer-2 transaction costs and boosting rollup performance. This supports Ethereum’s rollup-centric scaling strategy, making L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism more cost-effective.

• Other EIPs: The Pectra upgrade also includes eight additional Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to optimize staking, validator operations, and network efficiency, per CoinDesk. These include EIP-2537, which introduces a precompile for faster BLS12-381 cryptographic operations to enhance privacy tools; EIP-2935, storing historical block hashes in a smart contract for easier data verification by light clients; EIP-6110, processing validator deposits on-chain to reduce activation delays to approximately 45 minutes; EIP-7002, enabling execution-layer validator withdrawals to improve security and user control; EIP-7549, optimizing validator vote aggregation to lower consensus-layer overhead; EIP-7623, increasing calldata costs to encourage blob usage for layer-2 scalability; EIP-7685, adding general-purpose bus for sharing execution layer triggered requests with the consensus layer; and EIP-7840, adding blob schedule to execution layer configuration files.

These EIPs collectively enhance Ethereum’s staking infrastructure, scalability, and developer experience, reinforcing its rollup-centric strategy.

The Pectra upgrade primarily enhances the staking experience on the Ethereum network and introduces new wallet functionalities. By updating blockchain capabilities, the upgrade makes Ethereum more efficient and user-friendly, aligning with founder Vitalik Buterin’s vision of simplifying Ethereum’s technical complexity to make it as straightforward as Bitcoin. Following the Pectra upgrade’s completion, ETH’s price rose by 6.4% within 24 hours, a contrast to previous Ethereum upgrades where ETH typically declined post-upgrade due to profit-taking. This price increase suggests that Pectra effectively addressed key user pain points, exceeding expectations. It not only rekindled community attention to Ethereum but also bolstered confidence in its long-term development.