Pectra Upgrade Goes Live on Ethereum Mainnet, Raising Max Stake to 2,048 ETH

TL;DR

• Ethereum developers have activated the long-awaited Pectra upgrade.

• The upgrade aims to streamline staking (increasing it to 2,048 ETH), enhance wallet functionality, and improve overall efficiency.

Ethereum Activates the Pectra Upgrade

The Ethereum network activated its long-awaited “Pectra” upgrade on Wednesday. Many consider it one of its most important upgrades since the Merge in 2022. 

The Pectra upgrade seeks to streamline staking, enhance wallet functionality, and boost the blockchain’s efficiency. The hard fork was triggered at 10:05 UTC and finalized 13 minutes later.

The most important aspect of the upgrade is the increase in the ETH one can stake from 32 to 2,048. According to developers, the change could accelerate and streamline staking operations on the blockchain. 

Prior to this upgrade, staking at scale on the Ethereum blockchain required setting up multiple validators. However, Pectra allows stakers to consolidate up to that amount under a single node.

The upgrade comes when Ethereum is losing market share in the smart contracts and dApp ecosystems to competitors. Solana has been Ethereum’s biggest competitor, attracting more new developers over the last 12 months than Ethereum. 

Pectra’s Major Updates

• EIP-7251

This is the most important feature in this upgrade. EIP-7251 increases the maximum amount validators can stake from 32 to 2,048 ETH. By increasing the staking limit, small operators can compound their stake directly, while large ones can consolidate validators to reduce bandwidth use on the p2p network.

• EIP-7702

This upgrade allows crypto wallets to temporarily function as smart contracts. This change brings the Ethereum network closer to account abstraction, a series of features that pave the way for more user-friendly crypto wallets.

This upgrade allows users to pay transaction fees in stablecoins instead of ETH. They can also set up an automatic payments system or introduce recovery access to wallets if they forget their seed phrases.

• EIP-2537

This upgrade brings a function to the Ethereum blockchain that makes certain cryptographic operations faster and more efficient, which could benefit privacy tools.

• EIP-2935

This allows the network to store more past block information on the blockchain, making it easier to verify that data.

• EIP-6110

Eases the process of new validators joining the Ethereum network by handling their staking deposits more directly within the system.

• EIP-7002

Empowers validators to launch withdrawals of their funds directly, boosting security and user experience for validators. 

• EIP-7549

Improves how the blockchain processes validator votes.

• EIP-7623

Increase the costs of calldata, which is used for data availability (DA).

• EIP-7685

Establishes a standardized way to communicate requests between the execution and consensus layers.

• EIP-7691 

Increases Ethereum’s capacity to handle more data blobs per block.

• EIP-7840

Introduces a configurable setting for managing how much data Ethereum can handle per block.

ETH, the native coin of the Ethereum blockchain, is up 4% in the last 24 hours and now trades above $1,900.