The Pectra Mainnet is confirmed to activate on May 7. What updates are there?

Source: Deng Chain Community

The Pectra network upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Ethereum mainnet on May 7, 2025, at epoch 364032 (UTC time 10:05:11)!

From EOA to Smart Account

EIP-7702 represents an important step towards widespread account abstraction, allowing users to enhance their externally owned accounts (EOA) with smart contract functionality.

This hybrid approach combines the simplicity of EOA with the programmability of contract-based accounts. In practice, it enables wallets to support:

• Batch processing of transactions, where multiple operations are executed atomically in a single transaction. No need for separate transactions for "approve" and "swap" anymore!
• Gas sponsorship allows others to pay transaction fees. This is especially useful when wanting to make a transaction from an account without ETH.
• Alternative identity verification, which means that many hardware security modules in today's phones (HSM) can be used to authorize account operations through technologies like passkeys.
• Expenditure control, which can limit the number of tokens that specific applications can spend, or restrict the daily outflow amount of a wallet, thereby enhancing security.
• Recovery mechanism that provides users with different options to protect their assets without the need to migrate to a new account.

To use EIP-7702, the EOA signs an authorization to a specific delegated address, which contains the code it wishes to execute. Once set up, the account will gain functionality of the new code (e.g., batch processing, sponsorship, authentication logic, etc.). Since choosing a delegated target transfers a large amount of control, EIP-7702 enforces multiple security checks:

• Chain-specific delegation: By default, the delegation is only valid on a specific chain ID to prevent the same authorization from being used across different networks.
• Nonce bound delegation: Authorization can be bound to the current nonce of the account, and once the nonce increases, it will automatically become invalid.
• Revocability: The owner of an EOA can always create another EIP-7702 authorization to revoke or replace the existing delegated code, thereby preventing permanent locking in case of issues.

Blob Scaling .oO

The last major change in Pectra is EIP-7691, which doubles the blob throughput of Ethereum!

Blob is a temporary data storage introduced in the Dencun upgrade, which allows L2 to submit compressed transaction data and proofs to Ethereum L1. Since its launch, it has reduced the L1 fees for L2 by 10 to 100 times, significantly lowering the cost of transactions for L2 users.

The Ethereum mainnet currently supports an average of 3 blobs per block, with a maximum of 6 blobs to accommodate high demand periods. With EIP-7691, these numbers will increase to an average of 6 and a maximum of 9.

Unlike CALLDATA, which is stored indefinitely by nodes, blobs are deleted from the network after 4096 epochs (approximately 18 days). This limits the amount of disk space they can utilize. The binding constraint of blobs is bandwidth, as blobs need to be gossiped through Ethereum's peer-to-peer network. To offset the bandwidth increase caused by EIP-7691, Pectra also introduced EIP-7623, which limits the worst-case size of blocks.

In order to continue expanding Ethereum's data throughput without correspondingly increasing bandwidth requirements, we must shift from a world where each node stores every blob to a world where nodes only store a subset and sample the network to validate the remaining blob data. The good news is: work to support this functionality is already underway! Francesco from the Ethereum Foundation research team outlined this expansion roadmap in his Devcon keynote.

Pectra Activation

The Pectra network upgrade will be activated on the Ethereum mainnet at the start of epoch 364032, occurring on May 7, 2025, at 10:05:11 UTC.

It has previously been activated on the Hoodi, Holesky, and Sepolia test networks.

Consensus Layer Version

When running the validator, it is necessary to update the consensus layer beacon node and the validator client.

Frequently Asked Questions

As an Ethereum mainnet user or $ETH holder, do I need to do anything?

In short, no need.

If you are using an exchange, digital wallet, or hardware wallet, you do not need to take any action unless you are instructed to take further steps by the exchange or wallet provider.

If you want to watch the upgrade launch, you can join the online viewing party!

As a staker, what do I need to do?

To ensure compatibility with the upgrade, please update the execution and consensus layer clients of the nodes to the versions listed in the table above. Make sure your beacon node and validator client are both updated.

Why is it "Pectra"?

The upgrade of the execution layer follows the names of Devcon cities, while the upgrade of the consensus layer uses stellar names. "Pectra" is a combination of the blue-white giant star Electra in the constellation of Prague ( and Taurus ), where Devcon IV was held.