Ethereum activates Pectra upgrades on the mainnet, marking important milestones in the blockchain network. The upgrade was released on Epoch 364032 around 10:05 on May 7th.
Tim Beiko, the protocol support lead for the Ethereum Foundation, confirmed the upgrade and said Pectra was successfully completed live. He noted that ongoing testing of the new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIPS) will continue for the next few days.
Joseph Lubin, co-founder and CEO of Consensys, commented, highlighting the network’s progress over the years.
He described Ethereum as having achieved nearly a decade of continuous uptime and called the Pectra upgrade a major step forward in building the foundations of a distributed global system.
Rubin said:
“(We) patiently build the foundational substrates of new decentralized world economy and global systems, ensuring we adhere to the sacred principles of reliable neutrality, gradual strict decentralization, and endogenous censorship resistance.”
What Pectra brings to Ethereum
Pectra upgrades introduce changes that rebuild the way users, validators, and developers interact with the Ethereum network. Merge two important update tracks, including Prague in the execution layer and Electra in the consensus layer.
An important update to this upgrade is the introduction of EIP-7702. This allows your regular wallet to work like a smart contract.
This allows users to pay with non-ETH tokens, batch multiple transactions, and use their session keys when interacting with DAPP.
As a result, Ethereum users will have a smoother experience for Defi, gaming, and payment platforms.
Pectra will also significantly increase the validator stake limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. This helps simplify node operations for agencies and large stakers.
Additionally, Ethereum developers are set up to benefit from increasing data capacity on Layer 2 networks, leading to faster and cheaper transactions.
Overall, Pectra will introduce these changes to improve network performance, reduce congestion and improve participation economics.
Be careful during celebrations
Despite extensive support for upgrades, some security experts have raised concerns about the risks introduced by these new features.
Vladimir S., a well-known blockchain security researcher, warned that a new message signing mechanism could open users to fresh vulnerabilities.
He warned that even signing off-chain messages could expose your wallet to a malicious actor. This is a change from previous transaction-based security expectations.
He said:
“Now, with the Pectry Salium upgrade, you just need to sign your message to be completely exhausted!
Meanwhile, Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of Crypto Trading Platform Trading Protocol, questioned whether some features, particularly those related to DAPP authorization, were properly standardized.
He said the lack of clear implementation guidelines can lead to inconsistent experiences across the wallet, which can irritate users and developers.
He said:
“Pectra is live on EIP-7715. But can you withstand that name? There doesn’t seem to be a standard for the simplest thing that everyone is advertising. It’ll be another developer experience sit show.”