Pectra upgrade, reshaping user experience, foundation restructuring, can Ethereum break through years of stagnation?

After the Pectra upgrade last Wednesday, ETH recorded its strongest weekly performance since 2021.

Original Title: "Can Pectra, UX and Team Shuffle Revive ETH?"

Compiled & Edited by: Patti, ChainCatcher

"One of the most outstanding characteristics of Bitcoin is that its protocol is designed so elegantly and simply." This was stated by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, when discussing the largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.

The timing of this statement coincides perfectly with the identity crisis that Ethereum is currently facing.

A week ago, Vitalik wrote this sentence in his blog post "Simplifying the L1." Three days later, Ethereum developers deployed the most complex upgrade of the network to date onto the blockchain.

On one hand, after the Pectra upgrade on Wednesday, ETH recorded its strongest weekly performance since 2021. On the other hand, its co-founders hope to rebuild the network with a simpler architecture.

Is this the beginning of the revival of Ethereum, or is this just another false dawn for a network that has stagnated for years while its competitors continue to reach new highs?

In this article, we will explore the changes happening in Ethereum, why these changes are important, and whether these rapid developments can help Ethereum break free from years of stagnation.

Pectra Upgrade: A Key Battle in the Revival Attempt of Ethereum

The success or failure of this revival attempt of Ethereum largely depends on its recent upgrade.

On May 7, 2024, the pectra upgrade — the largest code change since The Merge (September 2022) — officially went live. This upgrade makes wallets smarter, increases validator efficiency, and reduces fees on Layer 2.

The upgrade ultimately took more than a month longer than originally planned, changing the way Ethereum operates. Among them, the core content of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) - 7702 granted smart contract functionality to regular wallets.

This seemingly technical change has actually reshaped the fundamental experience for users.

Anonymous Optimism project contributor Binji wrote on platform X: "Ethereum has only just begun to feel like a modern network." He also added that the Pectra upgrade reduced the number of clicks required for users to "get things done."

In simple terms, this upgrade brings the following conveniences to users:

• Users can now bundle multiple operations together and execute them without having to approve each step of the transaction one by one.
• Users can pay transaction fees with stablecoins instead of having to use Ethereum (ETH) for each transaction.

Dapp can even pay gas fees for users, implementing a "freemium" model, allowing users to interact without holding any ETH.

For validators, EIP-7251 significantly raises the staking cap from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. This means lower operating costs, which is particularly beneficial for institutional stakers.

Layer 2 also benefits from it.

EIP-7691 doubles the blob space of each block, helping to keep Layer 2 transaction fees low as demand increases. This upgrade comes at a crucial time—Jesse Pollak, a developer at Coinbase's Base Chain, previously warned that demand for Layer 2 will increase "10 to 20 times" by 2025.

So, can these technological improvements translate into a resurgence of market confidence?

Historically, Ethereum upgrades have often been accompanied by the situation of "good news fully priced in is bad news." After the "Merge" upgrade was completed in 2022, the price of ETH dropped by more than 30%.

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However, this situation may be different, as the code changes are accompanied by shifts in narrative and leadership.

What was the result? Within 40 hours after the Pectra upgrade went live, the price of ETH surged by about 40%.

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V God Calls for a Redesign of the Ethereum User Experience

Three days before the official launch of the Pectra upgrade, Vitalik Buterin published perhaps the most important vision statement of his years - "Simplifying the L1".

The core message he conveys in the article is that ETH must become "as simple as Bitcoin" within five years.

For years, Ethereum has increased its complexity to address various technical challenges, and now, this Ethereum co-founder hopes to remove that complexity to ensure the long-term viability and resilience of the network.

He pointed out in his vision statement that even high school students can understand the code of Bitcoin. In contrast, Ethereum has become increasingly complex, which limits the range of people who can effectively contribute to it.

V's plan includes three radical proposals:

• Replace the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with the RISC-V architecture. The RISC-V architecture is simpler and more efficient, promising a "hundredfold performance improvement."
• Simplifying Ethereum's consensus mechanism through "3-Slot-Finality", discarding complex systems such as epochs and validator shuffling.
• Standardize the protocols of the entire tech stack from data encoding to tree structure.

Ethereum Foundation Leadership Restructuring

In February of this year, Aya Miyaguchi, the Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, announced her transition to the newly established position of "Chairperson," marking the end of months of dissatisfaction within the community regarding the leadership and direction of the foundation.

Previously, critics have increasingly questioned the foundation's approach—whether prioritizing the purity of its ideals over competitive positioning in an increasingly fierce market environment can still meet the development needs of Ethereum.

The restructuring resulting from this was officially finalized at the end of April, marking a significant governance change in the history of the Ethereum Foundation.

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The newly appointed leadership of the foundation quickly clarified the work priorities: expanding the capacity of the Ethereum mainnet, improving Layer 2 rollups, and enhancing user experience.

The two co-directors wrote in a public statement: "We are well aware that there is a need to accelerate the journey for developers, founders, institutions, and others to develop and adopt Ethereum technology on Ethereum."

For many years, the foundation has maintained a "neutral" stance, as described by critics, towards the development of the ecosystem, avoiding participation in any activities that appear to be marketing or competitive positioning.

The newly appointed co-director Stańczak stated during an interview with Bankless that improving communication is currently a priority for the foundation, and that "clearly conveying information is also part of marketing."

This simple statement represents a dramatic shift compared to the foundation's previous reluctance to even acknowledge marketing as a legitimate function.

Challenges Still Exist

Despite these promising developments in Ethereum, it still faces significant resistance.

Currently, the trading price of Ethereum ETH is about 2200 dollars, less than half of its all-time high of 4878 dollars set in November 2021. Meanwhile, Bitcoin and Solana have both surpassed their previous records in 2025, while Ethereum is still hovering at low levels.

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In March this year, influenced by the market turmoil caused by Trump's tariff policy, ETH's decline exceeded that of other mainstream cryptocurrencies, with the price briefly falling below $1600, marking the first low for this cryptocurrency in a year and a half.

Critics point out that there are fundamental issues with Ethereum's economic model.

The Layer 2 Paradox: The success of Layer 2 scaling means that the transaction volume on the mainnet will decrease, which in turn will lead to a reduction in ETH's fee revenue.

Low staking efficiency: Before the Pectra upgrade, institutional stakers were forced to operate multiple validation nodes due to staking rule restrictions, which increased costs and reduced returns.

Technical debt accumulation: The complexity of Ethereum slows down the pace of innovation and raises the threshold for participation and contribution.

In addition, competition is becoming increasingly intense.

In February and April of this year, the DEX trading volume of Solana surpassed that of Ethereum. Even in the institutional investment sector, Bitcoin ETFs accounted for the majority of investment inflows, whereas the market acceptance of Ethereum-related products has been relatively lukewarm.

The leadership crisis in March further exacerbated these issues.

In this context, it is not difficult to understand why the Ethereum Foundation, Vitalik Buterin, and core developers are actively taking action from multiple aspects. After all, maintaining the status quo has become unsustainable.

So, can these changes reverse the challenges that Ethereum has accumulated over the years?

Ethereum Reform Calibration

The current transformation of Ethereum is not limited to individual upgrade initiatives, but is a recalibration of its overall development path.

With the advancement of this series of reforms, Ethereum has finally realized that outstanding technical capabilities alone are not enough to maintain a long-term foothold in the cryptocurrency world.

The key is the timing of change. These changes are long overdue after years of losing market share and underperforming prices. ETH price surged 40% after the Pectra upgrade, suggesting that investors are still interested in Ethereum. However, Ethereum faces a tough competition against projects that build simplicity into their designs from the start, rather than retrofitting them later.

The Ethereum Foundation has brought technical experts into management positions and acknowledged the importance of marketing work, indicating that it has begun to address the cultural inertia issues that hinder its competitiveness.

The improvements made by Pectra in the validator economic model and L2 scaling will bring positive benefits in the short term. However, in the long term, whether Vitalik Buterin's proposed five-year RISC-V architecture vision can maintain its focus will be a major challenge for Ethereum. After all, in its past development, Ethereum often struggled to maintain focus due to the conflicting priorities of numerous tasks.

The upcoming next upgrade - Fusaka, will be a key indicator for testing Ethereum's strategic transformation. If this upgrade places the mainnet improvements on top of the Layer 2 network infrastructure, it will confirm that Ethereum's strategic shift is real and lasting, rather than a temporary measure.

The next 12 months will reveal whether these changes are a revival of Ethereum or merely a slow adaptation to market realities. For investors, whether the Ethereum network can steadfastly pursue its new direction can be glimpsed from the ongoing effectiveness of its leadership and the momentum of its development progress, which is far more important than any single technical milestone.

If Ethereum can complete this transformation while adhering to its core values, then its vision of a "world ledger" may reposition ETH as the cornerstone asset of the next-generation global financial system, with a value far exceeding the current level reflected by the price of 2200 dollars.