Ethereum launches the Pectra upgrade on May 7, combining the Prague execution layer hard fork with the Electra consensus layer upgrade, introducing 11 EIPs — including EIP-7702, EIP-7251, EIP-7002, and EIP-7691 — that impact staking, user experience, and scalability.
It’s one of the most significant upgrades aimed at fundamentally improving Ethereum’s efficiency and accessibility for institutional investors, developers, and everyday users.
Why Pectra May Be One of the Most Important Architectural Changes in Ethereum
So, the Pectra upgrade brings with it a range of fundamental changes, many of which have been critical for Ethereum and previously gave players like Solana a competitive advantage. In particular, Pectra marks two major architectural shifts at once: the Prague hard fork (execution layer) and the Electra upgrade (consensus layer), introducing 11 key Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs).
- EIP-2537. Precompile for BLS12-381 curve operations
Adds a precompile for cryptographic operations over the BLS12-381 curve used in Ethereum 2.0 (e.g., for signature aggregation). This promises to increase performance and reduce the cost of such operations in smart contracts. - EIP-2935. Save historical block hashes in state
Allows contracts to access earlier block hashes by storing them in state, which should simplify the implementation of history-dependent functions without increasing network load. - EIP-6110. Supply validator deposits on the chain
Moves validator deposit data directly into execution layer blocks, removing the need for Eth1Data and proposer voting, which should accelerate validator activation (~12 hours to ~13 minutes) and improve security. - EIP-7002. Execution layer triggerable withdrawals
Adds the ability to initiate validator exits and fund withdrawals through the execution layer using withdrawal credentials (0x01), not only via the active key from the consensus layer, thereby improving staking security and flexibility. - EIP-7251. Increase the MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE
Raises the validator maximum effective balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, allowing validators to be significantly consolidated, enabling compound rewards, and reducing network load by lowering the total number of validators. - EIP-7549. Move the committee index outside the Attestation
Moves the committee index outside the signed attestation message, allowing aggregation of identical votes from different committees, improving consensus efficiency and lowering verification overhead. - EIP-7623. Increase calldata cost
Increases calldata costs to incentivize migration to more efficient data storage formats (such as blob data). This may help slow the growth of the state size. - EIP-7685. General-purpose execution layer requests
A general-purpose interface for passing arbitrary data from the execution layer to the consensus layer. This will support the implementation of more complex interactions, including future protocol upgrades. - EIP-7691. Blob throughput increase
Increases the target number of blobs from 3 to 6 and the maximum from 6 to 9, improving throughput for L2 rollup solutions and reducing calldata pressure. - EIP-7702. Set the EOA account code
Allows Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily act as smart contracts and opens the way to account abstraction, batch transactions, and custom validation without changing the account type. - EIP-7840. Add blob schedule to EL config files
Allows execution layer clients to manage blob scheduling via configuration files, used for setting parameters related to blob data storage.
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Conclusion
What we’re seeing is not just a technical upgrade (though the scale of the technical changes alone is undeniably significant), but also a clear strategic initiative to improve Ethereum in several of its most critical areas. Will it help Ethereum compete more effectively with similar solutions? Will it strengthen its market position and price performance? These questions remain open.
However, a large part of Web3 still runs on Ethereum, and meaningful improvements to Ethereum are, by extension, meaningful improvements for all L2 solutions—and the entire Web3 ecosystem. Stay tuned for updates, and be adaptive in the rapidly evolving blockchain, financial, and crypto landscape.
