Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade Scheduled

Ethereum’s core developers decided Thursday to proceed on schedule with the network’s highly anticipated Pectra upgrade, despite a recent testnet failure.

On Monday, Ethereum’s developers initiated the Holesky testnet, a practice run for the Pectra upgrade that wouldn’t affect the mainnet. Unfortunately, this testnet failed to finalize, and the mock upgrade has yet to be successfully implemented.

In a developer meeting, Ethereum’s leadership recognized the seriousness of the situation but emphasized it was manageable and not alarming.

> “Even though this Holesky issue has evolved quite badly, the trigger incident on the execution side was quite trivial and easily patched,” said Tim Beiko of the Ethereum Foundation.

The team decided to proceed with the next testnet, Sepolia, scheduled for March 5. If Sepolia goes well, Pectra is expected to be implemented in early April.

While developers are confident the Holesky issue was minor, they acknowledged it poses a public relations challenge.

> “People are watching,” stated Jim McDonald, co-founder of Ethereum staking service Attestant, who urged colleagues to manually check the code for the upcoming Sepolia fork to reassure the public.

Once live, Pectra will introduce several long-desired features. Notably, it will enable smart contract functionality in basic crypto wallets from mainstream companies like MetaMask and Coinbase, allowing users to pay gas fees with any cryptocurrency, including stablecoins. This update aims to enhance the user experience for consumer-facing crypto applications.

Additionally, Pectra will allow independent Ethereum stakers to earn rewards on amounts greater than 32 ETH for the first time and will significantly reduce bandwidth requirements for staking pools like Lido and Rocket Pool.

Edited by Andrew Hayward