Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade has now been scheduled to go live on the mainnet on May 7, 2025.

The announcement was made during a call held by the blockchain’s core developers on April 3.

Technical Challenges

Pectra is one of Ethereum’s most significant upgrades since the network’s transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in 2022. It merges the Prague execution layer with the Electra consensus layer and includes 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at improving the blockchain’s scalability, efficiency, and usability.

Originally planned for March 2025, the changes were postponed due to challenges encountered during testnet implementation. Specifically, the Holesky testnet experienced finality issues, preventing developers from proceeding with the original timeline. Additionally, a minor bug was discovered on the Sepolia testnet in early March, which was identified and resolved before further testing.

Developers then launched the Hoodi testnet, successfully running the enhancements without major incidents. This phase led to the confirmation of the May 7, 2025, mainnet deployment date.

“We’ll go ahead and lock in May 7 for Pectra on mainnet,” said Ethereum Foundation researcher Alex Stokes during yesterday’s core developers’ call. “Happy Pectra everyone.”

Despite recent developments, Ethereum’s market performance has remained weak, with its native ETH token posting its worst first-quarter performance in 7 years. A recent report from CryptoQuant showed that the ecosystem continues to struggle due to low activity, declining transaction fees, and a reduced ETH burn rate, all of which have contributed to increased inflationary pressure on the network.

Key Features and Improvements

Pectra contains several improvements aimed at making Ethereum more user-friendly and efficient. Key features in the new version include smart contract functionality for wallets, enhanced staking capabilities, account abstraction, privilege management, and the ability to sponsor transaction fees.

Account abstraction will allow Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to function similarly to smart contract wallets, introducing advanced features such as transaction batching, fee sponsorship, and custom security rules. These improvements are expected to enhance Ethereum’s flexibility, making decentralized applications (dApps) more accessible to users.

Petra also increases the validator staking limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. This change supports larger validators and allows smaller ones to receive compounding rewards.

Another addition is Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS), which reduces costs for layer-2 solutions by allowing nodes to verify large data availability without downloading all of it. The upgrade also includes the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Object Format, which enhances EVM code to support future functionality on both layer-1 and layer-2 networks.

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