jakiro
Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless; Compilation: Deng Tong, Bitchain Vision
Ethereum has been moving forward.
In March 2024, the network launched the Dencun upgrade.Dencun is a convergence of “Deneb” and “Cancun” that aims to significantly reduce L2 transaction costs.
What will happen next?Pectra is the next major upgrade to Ethereum and it will be more important than Dencun.
Pectra, which is scheduled to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2024 or the first quarter of 2025, combines two previously planned upgrades: Prague (for the execution layer) and Electra (for the consensus layer).Through the merger, Pectra aims to bring several ambitious improvements to Ethereum, making it more flexible and optimized than ever before.
What does Pectra contain?
Pectra is more than just a small upgrade, it’s full of updates.
The Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) is a proposed modification to Ethereum.They ensure transparent discussion and agreement on web changes and involve the community and core developers.
For the Pectra upgrade, it is currently planned to include 9 standard EIPs and a meta-EIP consisting of 11 other EIPs.
These EIPs include enhancements to account abstraction, validator operations, and overall network performance.Some of the most notable new features are as follows.
-
EIP-2537— The introduction of precompilation of BLS12-381 curve operations makes BLS signature operations faster and cheaper, thereby improving accessibility and performance for Ethereum validator and reducing gas costs.
-
EIP-2935— Implements the hash value of previous blocks in a special storage slot to improve the efficiency and reliability of verifying Ethereum data before stateless execution.
-
EIP-7002— Allows verifiers to trigger exits and partial withdrawals through their execution layer withdrawal vouchers, providing more flexible options for restaking and staking pools.
-
EIP-7251— Increase the maximum effective balance of Ethereum validators from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, reducing the total number of validators required and simplifying the computing load on the network.
-
EIP-7594— Introduce peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS) to further optimize L2 and enhance transaction processing and scalability.
-
EIP-7702— Add a new transaction type that sets the code for EOA (external owned account) during a transaction, allowing the normal wallet to be temporarily converted into a smart contract wallet to improve the user experience.
-
EIP-7692— A meta-EIP consisting of 11 EIPs designed to enhance the EVM object format (EOF) to improve contract deployment and execution efficiency.
New and improved Ethereum
In the post-Pectra era, Ethereum will meet a wider range of use cases and user needs.
Regular Ethereum accounts will be more programmable, L2 will be more affordable, smart contracts will be more efficient, and validators will be more flexible to manage!
With these enhancements, Ethereum will be able to better cope with growing adoption, integrate with other networks, and introduce new features that keep the platform at the forefront of on-chain innovation.
What happens after Pectra?
Although everything is not yet finalized,The Ethereum community is focusing on implementing the Verkle tree in the Osaka upgrade after Pectra.
“I’m really looking forward to the Verkle tree,” Vitalik said earlier this year.“They will enable stateless validator clients, which allows staking nodes to run on nearly zero hard disk space and synchronize almost immediately – a better separate staking user experience.”
That being said, Ethereum’s next upgrade will significantly improve the chain’s usability to users and developers.Ethereum cannot be built in one day, but in terms of building all future-oriented networks that Ethereum is implementing, steady progress is the king.
