Ethereum developers have finally delivered a timeline for the chain’s next big upgrade, Pectra, which promises to introduce a range of speed and efficiency improvements to the second largest blockchain. In a developer meeting virtually held on Thursday, Ethereum’s core team set the upgrade’s target release date for March 2025.
Pectra bundles eight major upgrades, or “Ethereum enhancement proposals” (EIPs), into one package.
Among the most anticipated upgrades is the EIP-7702, which aims to improve the wallets user experience. The upgrade, which was reportedly described by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 22 minutes onlyallows user wallets to be programmed like smart contracts. This is part of a broader strategy to bring account abstraction in Ethereum — a series of features that make setting up and using wallets less clunky.
Another highly anticipated upgrade, the EIP-7251, increasing the maximum amount that validators can bet from 32 to 2,048 ETH. The change addresses a huge nuisance that validators already face stake ETH to keep the chain running today: Those who want to invest more than 32 ETH in the network must split their stake between dozens — or sometimes, hundreds — of separate nodes. It’s not just a burden. It also resulted in weeks long lines for setting up new nodes.
Pectra was originally on track to be Ethereum’s biggest hard fork to date, and it’s the first major improvement to the chain since 2024’s Dencun upgrade. A blockchain hard fork is a particularly basic type of software upgrade that, in essence, moves a network to an entirely new chain.
While still significant, the upgrades included with the Pectra have been omitted from some previous plans. The developers decided in September that the previous plans for Pectra were too ambitious, and they agreed to divorce the original package in two.
The developers plan to test Pectra on Ethereum’s Sepolia and Holesky test networks throughout February. If all goes well, the developers will proceed to bring Pectra to the mainnet in early or mid-March.
Read more: Ethereum Developers Confirm Plan to Split ‘Pectra’ Upgrade In Two
