Christine Kim, a researcher at Galaxy Digital, called the upcoming Ethereum upgrade, known as Prague-Electra, aka Pectra, “perhaps the biggest in Ethereum history.” In a thread on X, Kim outlined the code changes and highlighted how Pectra could fundamentally change Ethereum’s operational and security paradigms.
Why the Ethereum Pectra Upgrade is Massive
Pectra follows the successful implementation of Dencun upgrade, which was rolled out in March 2023, making it the next significant advancement for the Ethereum network. It incorporates a variety of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that target key aspects of the network’s functionality, from cryptographic improvements to improving system efficiency. Here’s a closer look at each of the changes in Prague:
- EIP-2537: This EIP aims to add operations for the BLS12-381 curve in precompilation. The move is crucial to performing operations such as BLS signature verification, improving security through more robust cryptographic proofs, and facilitating better interoperability with Ethereum. Tag string.
- EIP-2935: Written by Vitalik Buterin and others, EIP-2935 proposes to store the last 8192 block hashes in storage locations of a system contract. This enables stateless execution and is a fundamental step toward the upcoming Verkle Trees upgrade, which aims to significantly reduce state size and improve network scalability.
- EIP-7685: Authored by Lightclient, this proposal introduces a general purpose bus to share EL-triggered requests with the CL. Its implementation should streamline the process of testing code and deploying runtime-triggered queries, such as those related to changes to the consensus layer.
- EOF (Ethereum Object Format): This is a collection of 10 EIPs that reorganize the way EVM bytecode is processed. The expected result is an improvement in the dapp developer experience by making smart contract code execution more efficient, logically sound, consistent and scalable.
- EIP-7702: Proposed by Vitalik Buterin, Sam Wilson, Ansgar Dietrichs and Matt Garnett, this EIP aims to introduce a new transaction type that allows setting the code of an external account (EOA) during a transaction. This could significantly improve user experience by enabling transaction bundling, sponsored transactions, and more flexible control over EOAs.
Several key EIPs have been confirmed for the Electra portion of the upgrade, addressing crucial aspects of validator operations and system efficiency:
- EIP-6110: This EIP proposes to provide validator deposits as a list of deposit operations added to the execution layer block. This change simplifies the validator experience by removing the need for deposit voting, reducing the complexity of the client software, and decreasing the time between submitting a deposit transaction and processing it on the consensus layer.
- EIP-7002: Written by Danny Ryan and others, this allows validators to trigger partial exits and withdrawals using their execution layer’s withdrawal credentials, improving the design of pools of trustless staking.
- EIP-7251 and EIP-7549: These proposals focus on optimizing validator balance configurations and improving attestation efficiency within blocks, which could reduce network bandwidth requirements and improve overall security.
Uncertainties and timing
Kim also revealed that “alongside the confirmed EIPs for Pectra, developers are also working on a few parallel initiatives such as PeerDAS, history expiration, and thin client development.” Depending on how this plays out, we could see new EIPs included in Pectra down the road.
She points out that several EIPs are currently being implemented on development networks (devnets), which marks a change in the governance process of Ethereum. This strategic step allows the community to adjust the scope of the upgrade based on real-world testing results, ensuring robustness and stability before full deployment.
Active participation from the Ethereum developer community is crucial, with ongoing discussions, testing, and feedback shaping the final configuration of the Pecta upgrade. Next steps involve new Devnet implementations and community reviews, with the possibility of some EIPs being deferred to later upgrades based on their readiness and impact assessment.
Finally, “it’s unclear exactly how big Pectra will be, since developers don’t know which EIPs will be enabled together and which they will enable separately,” Kim concluded. The Ethereum core development team has set a goal of rolling out the Pectra upgrade by Q1 2025.
At press time, ETH was trading at $3,807.
Featured image created with DALL·E, chart from TradingView.com
