Pectra takes the first step in the upgrade, what updates will Ethereum welcome?

Pectra upgrade aims to improve three key areas: the user experience of ETH accounts, validators, and blobs.

Author: Francesco

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

The next upgrade of Ethereum, Pectra, has taken the first step.

On February 24th, Pectra upgraded and went live on the Holesky testnet; on March 5th, Pectra will go live on the Sepolia testnet.

Once these upgrades are successfully implemented on the testnet, the mainnet upgrade date will be determined, with the mainnet upgrade expected to take place within 3 to 9 months of the testnet implementation.

Pectra is a fairly significant upgrade that introduces multiple ETH Improvement Proposals (EIPs) at once:

We can divide these upgrades into three key areas:

• Improve ETH Ethereum account
• Improve the user experience of Ethereum validators
• Expand the processing power of "Data Blob".

Let's dive into some of the upcoming Ethereum improvement proposals and how they will benefit the Ethereum protocol and users.

Improve ETH Ethereum account: EIP-7702

EIP-7702 brings the ETH workshop closer to the abstract experience of the account at the protocol level. It does this by extending smart contract functionality for externally owned accounts (EOAs) of ETH Square, including:

• Transaction Batch: Execute multiple operations in a single transaction
• Gas Fee Sponsorship: Accounts without ETH are allowed to be sponsored by others to pay gas fees
• More authentication and recovery mechanisms

Improve the user experience of Ethereum validators: EIP-7251, EIp-7002, EIP-6110

• EIP-7251: Increases the maximum balance of validators to 2048 ETH and allows for automatic compounding of larger valid staking rewards. Previously, rewards were only calculated based on a balance of 32 ETH. In addition, larger validators can now merge multiple 32 ETH validators into one.
• EIP-7002: As long as the execution layer address is set to 'withdrawable credentials', it is allowed to trigger withdrawal operations, thus reducing reliance on trust. Previously, only validators could trigger exit operations.
• EIP-6110: The delay from the withdrawal of validators' deposits to being added to the queue for up to 2048 blocks has been removed. The expected wait time will be shortened from 9 hours to 13 minutes.

Extended data blob processing capacity: EIP-7691

As the cost of "blobs" increases, so does the need to expand their processing power. With EIP-7691, the capacity of "data blobs" will be increased by 50%: currently, each ETH block can hold an average of about 3 "data blobs" (up to 6 during peak demand periods). With EIP-7691, the average number of "data blobs" that can be accommodated per block will increase to 6, and to 9 during peak demand periods.

The next step in further expanding the processing capabilities of 'data Blob' is to reduce the need to store all 'data Blobs' and migrate to a subnet that can still be used to verify 'data Blob' data.

Additional EIPs included in the Pectra upgrade

EIP-2537: Increased the number of safe bits for operations from the current 80 to more than 120.

EIP-2935: In preparation for the arrival of stateless clients, this proposal suggests storing historical block hash values as part of the block processing logic in the state. By implementing this through contract storage, EIP-2935 allows for a smooth transition without affecting the block hash logic. Layer 2 networks will be able to utilize longer historical data and directly query the storage contract.

EIP-7549: This proposal is intended to improve the efficiency of the Casper client. It achieves this by reducing the number of pairs required to validate consensus. Specifically, it removes one of three elements in the Casper client attestation message: the committee index. By removing this element from the proof message, consensus votes can now be aggregated into blocks more efficiently, increasing the number of votes in a block from 2 to 8 epochs.

EIP-7623: The proposal to increase the cost of call data put forward by EIP-7623 is one of the most influential upgrades (especially for layer 2 networks). The proposal aims to adjust the cost of call data to address the gap between the average block size (100kb) and the maximum block size (7.15MB). This will not affect regular users, only those mainly used for publishing data transactions. The increase in cost will be achieved through a base fee, which depends on the ratio of Gas fees spent on call data operations: it can be achieved by reducing block size to accommodate more "data blobs", or by increasing the Gas limit.

EIP-7685: Introduces a framework for storing requests triggered by smart contracts. This allows validators, controlled by smart contracts, to delegate management operations to smart contracts, reducing the need for middlemen.

EIP-7840: Introduced a way to "dynamically adjust the target and maximum number of data blobs per block" via the "blobSchedule" object, instead of passing all values through the API.

This upgrade sends a clear signal from the ETH workshop. We know that these upgrades were on the agenda a long time ago and are not a response to recent criticism. Nonetheless, the upgrade is focused on making the ETH Workshop network more secure, improving the ETH Workshop account, and expanding the processing power of "data blobs", which is in line with some of the most important development needs.