Enhancing Account Abstraction and Optimizing Layer2: Ethereum's Third Major Upgrade Approaches
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Enhancing Account Abstraction and Optimizing Layer2: Ethereum's Third Major Upgrade Approaches
The key proposal in this technical upgrade focuses on enhancing account abstraction and optimizing validator operations to further improve Ethereum network performance.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: imToken
The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is expected to be implemented in the first quarter of 2025. This will be Ethereum's third major upgrade following The Merge in September 2022 and the Cancun upgrade in March 2024.
During the Ethereum core developer call held on January 9, 2025, Tim Beiko, the execution layer protocol support lead, suggested launching Devnet 5 for the Pectra upgrade during the week of January 13, upgrading public testnets Sepolia and Holesky in February 2025, and activating the upgrade on mainnet in March 2025.
About the Pectra Upgrade
The Pectra upgrade consists of two main components: the Prague execution layer upgrade and the Electra consensus layer upgrade. Key proposals in this technical upgrade focus on enhancing account abstraction, optimizing validator operations, and further improving Ethereum network performance. It also includes protocol improvements for Layer 2, which are among the most anticipated highlights of the Pectra upgrade.
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Consensus layer-related protocols include:
EIP-6110, EIP-7002, EIP-7251, EIP-7549, EIP-7691.
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Execution layer-related protocols include:
EIP-7685, EIP-7623, EIP-7702, EIP-2537, EIP-2935.
How the Pectra Upgrade Improves Ethereum
According to the EIP-7600 Pectra hard fork process implementation specification, the following Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) have currently been included in the Pectra upgrade:
EIP-6110: Deposit processing via consensus layer using on-protocol mechanisms
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When validators deposit ETH, they no longer need to rely on consensus-layer voting mechanisms for validation, thereby enhancing security for validator operations. Honest nodes can respond even if more than two-thirds of staked assets are controlled by adversaries. Additionally, this mechanism reduces client software design complexity and decreases operational latency.
EIP-7002: Trigger withdrawals from the execution layer
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Enables validators to initiate withdrawals, credential changes, and exits through the execution layer.
EIP-7251: Increase MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE
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Allows staking of more than 32 ETH per validator while keeping the minimum stake threshold unchanged at 32 ETH. This improvement aims to allow large node operators to consolidate multiple validators, reducing the total number of validators on the network and thus lowering peer-to-peer messaging, signature aggregation, and storage overhead.
EIP-7549: Move committee index out of attestation
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Aims to enable more efficient consensus vote aggregation, reducing verification costs and network load.
EIP-7691: Increase blob count
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Increases the maximum number of blobs per block to 6–9, helping Ethereum improve scalability through Layer 2 solutions.
EIP-7685: Generalized execution layer requests
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This proposal defines a generic framework for storing contract-triggered requests, simplifying the addition of new request types without requiring changes to the execution block structure, ultimately creating a safer system for users.
EIP-7623: Increase calldata cost
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Since the implementation of EIP-1559, Ethereum block gas limits have not increased, yet the volume of data published to the mainnet continues to grow, leading to increasing average block sizes. Calldata costs have remained unchanged since EIP-2028, but with the introduction of blobs via EIP-4844, it’s necessary to re-evaluate calldata pricing to reduce maximum block data size and free up space for more throughput-enhancing features like additional blobs.
EIP-7702: Set EOA account code
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Adds a new transaction type to enable code execution for EOA (Externally Owned Accounts), increasing account flexibility and programmability.
EIP-2537: Precompiles for BLS12-381 curve operations
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Introduces precompiled contracts to support BLS12-381 curve operations on Ethereum, enabling BLS signature verification and allowing multiple signatures to be aggregated into one, thereby reducing verification complexity.
EIP-2935: Store historical block hashes in state
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Stores the most recent 8192 block hashes in a system contract to support stateless client models and provide more flexible historical block hash queries. These hashes can be directly queried by contracts and provided as witness data bundles to stateless clients.
However, EIP-7594, which received significant early attention, has been inactive for over six months and is not expected to be included in the Pectra upgrade. EIP-7594 introduces a data availability sampling (DAS) protocol to ensure blob data remains available even when only subsets of data are downloaded.
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