Ethereum Devs Consider Splitting Pectra Upgrade, Aim for February Target
Date: 2024-09-16 Author: Oliver Abernathy Categories: BUSINESS
Ethereum developers are considering splitting the anticipated Pectra upgrade, which will improve the network’s efficiency and scalability, into two parts. The first phase could be released by early 2025.
“There is broad agreement that if we split the upgrade, the goal would be to release Pectra as quickly as possible, so early next year should be our target,” one developer said during an Ethereum execution layer meetup on September 12.
Developers Target February Deadline
“February seems realistic for a split Pectra,” another developer noted.
“Splitting the update only makes sense if it’s delivered in Q1,” added developer Danno Ferrin.
EF researcher Ansgar Dietrichs suggested that if the update is split and not delivered as soon as possible, it would be a failure. “I think a split where we still only release the first half, say in June, would be a failure,” he said at the meeting.
It has been suggested that splitting the update into two parts may be a safer option, as smaller forks typically carry less risk.
The Pectra update combines two separate updates: the Prague update and the Electra update. The Prague update focuses on changes to the execution layer of the network, while the Electra update affects the consensus layer.
Galaxy Crypto researcher Christina Kim believes that the likelihood of a split is high due to the complexity of the current Pectra fork and the desire to add even more to the update.
“The scope of the Pectra upgrade could change dramatically if the developers decide to split it into two hard forks,” Kim added.
The developers will make a decision at the next Ethereum All Core Developers (ACD) meeting on September 19.
The industry is optimistic about the Pectra upgrade
Kim previously said on June 7 that the Pectra upgrade was “evolving into a significant upgrade, possibly the largest in the history of Ethereum.”
Ethereum educator Sassal expressed a similar sentiment. “Pectra, the next upgrade to the Ethereum network, is rolling out as the largest in the history of Ethereum,” he told his 254,500 followers on X.
In April 2024, Cointelegraph reported that Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 3074 had been approved for inclusion in the next upgrade. The proposal allows regular crypto wallets to function as smart contracts.
One of the features of EIP-3074 is to provide standard externally managed accounts (EOAs), regular wallets like MetaMask, and smart contract capabilities.
This allows for features like transaction pooling, so that users only have to sign once, and sponsored transactions, where a wallet can delegate funds for use by others, similar to the account abstraction that was introduced in ERC-4337.
