Ethereum Core Developers Plan to Launch Pectra Upgrade by Q1 2025

According to recent announcements from the Ethereum core development team, Ethereum’s highly anticipated Pectra upgrade will be released by the end of Q1 2025.

This upgrade follows the successful deployment of the Dencun upgrade in March 2024 . The decision to schedule Pectra for early 2025 stems from a desire to avoid rushing the release and incorporate more impactful user features.

Evaluation of Timeline and Impact For the Upcoming Ethereum Pectra Upgrade

Ethereum developers have deliberated over several timeline scenarios for the Pectra upgrade . They concluded that delaying the launch until after the Devcon developer summit , scheduled for November 2024 in Bangkok, would be beneficial.

Devcon is the largest developer summit in the Asia Pacific region, and it will take place in Bangkok from November 12 to 15.

They emphasized that this strategic approach allows for a more measured development process and the inclusion of additional features that could significantly enhance user experience.

“We are observing that this is also what happened with Cancun, so being realistic, my vote would be to aim to ship Prague in Q1 2025. With today’s scope, delaying Prague seems to have a marginal impact on users and allows us to consider expanding the scope to include more impactful features for users,” noted the Ethereum developers in a recent document.

The experience from the Dencun upgrade deployment on the Goerli testnet has made them pay more attention to timing and its importance to adoption. Developers faced challenges in achieving consensus within the expected timeframe with the Dencun upgrade, which was eventually resolved. Still, they stressed the need for thorough preparation for the next upgrade.

The Pectra upgrade will focus on enhancing both the consensus and execution layers. One significant improvement will be the integration of PeerDAS, which aims to boost Ethereum’s Data Availability capacity ahead of the Osaka upgrade.

The Osaka upgrade, a future hard fork, is expected to include features initially considered for Pectra but postponed to allow for a more refined implementation. Notably, Osaka will likely implement Verkle Trees, a new data structure designed to enhance Ethereum’s scalability and decentralization.

Execution Layer Meeting Overview

In the Execution Layer Meeting , the team discussed the importance of supporting longstanding authorization use cases in Ethereum’s account management system. The team debated mechanisms to keep authorizations alive during transactions, including Max L and non-optional authorizations. They also touched on using 7702 and the approach of wallets signing only one message for standardized proxies.

Additionally, they are considering including EOF (Ethereum Object Format) to improve smart contract security and developer experience. A proposal to replace EIP-3074 with EIP-7702 would achieve better account abstraction compatibility and address specific issues.

“We need to decide on EIP7702 on ACDE, and if so, implement it as a replacement for EIP-3074. We think it makes sense to do so as it’s a more native-AA compatible solution because of the new transaction type vs an opcode,” developers noted.

The developers also discussed including and removing Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in the next development net. The team decided to include EIP 7702 and test it while removing EIP 3074. Notably, they also discussed the implementation status of various EIPs, including RIP-1185, and the potential delay of increasing or decreasing the scope of the next hard fork.

Ethereum TVL Reaching A New All-Time High

According to L2BEAT, the total value locked (TVL) in Ethereum Layer 2 networks has reached a record high of $47.45 billion . Arbitrum One leads the pack with a TVL of $19.3 billion, followed by OP Mainnet at $7.88 billion and Base at $6.94 billion. Other notable blockchains with over $1 billion in TVL include Blast, Mantle, Linea, and Starknet. The overall TVL of all Ethereum Layer 2s has surged by 17.39% in the past week.

The recent bullish trend is primarily driven by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) approval of spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on May 23 and the SEC-approved ETF applications from eight issuers, including BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and VanEck.

This marks the second spot digital asset ETF approval in the U.S., following the spot Bitcoin ETFs in January. These issuers are in the process of submitting S-1 forms, with launches anticipated within weeks.