The Ethereum Pectra upgrade was launched on May 7, 2025, at 10:05 AM UTC (epoch 364032) and successfully activated on mainnet just 13 minutes later.
Pectra includes the highest number of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) implemented in a single upgrade since The Merge in 2022, marking a major technical milestone.
Continuing Ethereum’s long-term vision of improving scalability and usability, Pectra enhances network efficiency and user experience. It also lays critical groundwork for upcoming upgrades like Fusaka, which will introduce features such as Verkle Trees and PeerDAS. Pectra is one phase in Ethereum’s broader roadmap toward a more scalable, user-friendly blockchain.
For the official announcement and livestream replay, check out:
How Does the Pectra Upgrade Affect Validators and Stakers?
- Streamlined Validator Operations: Large-scale stakers, such as staking service providers, can now operate more efficiently by reducing the need to deploy numerous small validators. This lowers both hardware demands and operational overhead.
- Improved Staking Experience: Validator activation is now more resilient, especially during periods of network congestion
- Greater System Flexibility: The upgrade improves system design to reduce failure rates across the board — benefiting both solo stakers and those using staking services or pools.
🔧 Key Technical Enhancements in Pectra
Building on the foundation laid by the Dencun upgrade—which introduced proto-danksharding via EIP-4844 in March 2024—Pectra delivers a wide range of improvements focused on scalability, usability, staking, and wallet functionality.
⚙️ Lowering L2 costs
EIP-7691: Increased Blob Capacity
Doubles the number of Blobs per block from 3 to 6, effectively doubling rollup throughput. This reduces Layer 2 data availability costs and leads to lower gas fees for users.
EIP-7623: Increased Calldata Costs
Incentivizes developers to move from calldata to the more efficient blob-based model, helping optimize data usage and support long-term scalability.
EIP-7840: Dynamic Blob Limit Configuration
Introduces on-chain flexibility to adjust blob limits based on demand—without requiring a hard fork—allowing Ethereum to scale more responsively.
🧩 Enhancing Wallet Capabilities through Account Abstraction
EIP-7702: Temporary Smart Wallet Functionality for EOAs
Allows Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily behave like smart contract wallets during a transaction. This major step toward account abstraction enables:
- Multi-step operations (e.g., swap, stake, bridge) in a single transaction
- Gas sponsorship by third parties
- Smart wallet functionality without switching wallet types or installing extensions
🔐 Improving Staking Experience
EIP-7251: Increased Validator Staking Limit
Raises the maximum staking limit, allowing large stakers to consolidate nodes. This reduces node count, cuts hardware and operational costs, and preserves security.
EIP-6110: Faster Validator Onboarding
Enables staking deposit data to be delivered directly to the Consensus Layer, bypassing Execution Layer sync delays and reducing bottlenecks during network congestion.
EIP-7002: Execution Layer-Triggered Exits
Enables validator exits to be initiated from the Execution Layer, simplifying the process and reducing operational risk.
EIP-7685: Better Layer Coordination
Improves communication between the Execution and Consensus Layers, enhancing overall staking performance and network efficiency.
EIP-7549: Efficient Vote Aggregation
Optimizes vote aggregation by validators, reducing peer-to-peer network load and ensuring scalability as validator numbers grow.
🛠️ Optimizing Contract Execution
EIP-6780: Restricts SELFDESTRUCT opcode
Limits the use of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode after contract deployment, improving security and predictability while maintaining backward compatibility.
EIP-5656: Introduces MCOPY for Faster Memory Copying
Adds MCOPY opcode, improving memory copy performance and reducing gas costs for complex DApp operations.
🔐 Zero-Knowledge and Cross-Chain Enhancements
EIP-2537: Faster Proof Verification
Adds support for BLS signatures and efficient proof verification, reducing the cost and latency of privacy-preserving transactions on ZK-Rollups and cross-chain exchanges.
EIP-2935: Extended Block History Access
Extends block history storage to 27 hours, aiding in cross-chain synchronization, debugging, and enhanced data traceability for developers.
What’s Next for Ethereum?
The future looks great with changes like PeerDAS coming in the following months. We should see Ethereum’s rollup capabilities scale significantly, further solidifying Ethereum’s role in the blockchain ecosystem.
—— Gabriel Camargo Fukushima
Sr. Blockchain Engineer II at Consensys
Pectra could reduce ETH supply.
—— Justin Drake, Ethereum researcher
Ethereum blob fees have dropped to their lowest possible level since the Pectra upgrade. Ether’s success depends on base layer scalability, including further improvements in the rollup mechanism, and ultimately, a more seamless user experience.
—— Noam Hurwitz, head of engineering at Alchemy