TechFlow news, May 7 — According to The Block, Ethereum developers activated the Pectra upgrade today at 6:05 a.m. Eastern Time at epoch 364032, marking the most significant network update since the 2022 "Merge." Pectra includes 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at enhancing staking efficiency, user experience, validator operations, and Layer 2 scalability.
The upgrade underwent rigorous testing on the Holesky, Sepolia, and Hoodi testnets, with successful deployment on the Hoodi testnet paving the way for mainnet activation. Key improvements include EIP-7702 enabling account abstraction, allowing user wallets to execute smart contract logic; EIP-7251 increasing the maximum effective stake limit per validator from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH; and EIP-7691 doubling Layer 2 data storage (blob) throughput to reduce transaction costs. Additionally, proposals such as EIP-7002 and EIP-6110 further optimize validator operations and network efficiency.
This upgrade lays the foundation for the future Fusaka upgrade, which will introduce Verkle Trees and PeerDAS technologies to enable even greater scalability.
