Ethereum Pectra hard fork’s blob capacity enhancement is operating within the thresholds analysts forecast, ethPandaOps said in a May 30 report. 

The update, which was initiated via the Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7691 (EIP-7691) on May 7, doubled the default blob count from three to six and lifted the ceiling from six to nine. Blobs are data pieces included in Ethereum blocks.

The report instrumented 123 Beacon-chain nodes across 27 countries, 29 in controlled data centers, and 94 in residential settings to track the “New Head” event. This is a timestamp recorded when a client declares a block and its blobs the new chain tip. 

The benchmark requires 66% of peers to reach New Head within four seconds, or the block risks being orphaned.

Working as expected for home users

Charts covering 50,025 slots through May 28 show home-user nodes accepted locally built solo-staker blocks in under four seconds 99.5% of the time, with only a handful of outliers. 

Regression across block size and arrival time projects that home nodes could tolerate up to 14 blobs before brushing the deadline, well above the nine-blob cap. 

The report concluded that “home users were able to support nine blobs,” validating pre-fork modeling that assumed bandwidth sensitivity at the network edge.

The report then stress-tested the model against a 60 million-gas worst-case block size, reflecting the upper bound under Pectra. 

The same regression trimmed safe capacity to 10 blobs, leaving a narrow margin but still clearing the live 6/9 envelope. 

The report noted that a higher gas cap would further tighten the window, reinforcing community calls to halt future gas limit increases until peer-to-peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS) ships in the subsequent Fusaka release.

Manageable relay timing

About 91% of main-chain blocks route through MEV-Boost relays, which insert a bid-acceptance round-trip between proposers and builders. 

Relay-sourced blocks reached New Head marginally slower, with home nodes registering 97.1% inside four seconds versus 99.5% for locally built blocks. 

A distribution plot attributes the tail to relays that delay header broadcasts as part of competitive timing strategies. Worst-case 60 million-gas simulations indicated a safe relay capacity of five blobs, but ethPandaOps expects relays to adjust once the competitive landscape penalizes late delivery.

Additionally, developers plan to shift from proposer-side blob propagation to PeerDAS under the Fusaka hard fork. 

EthPandaOps stated that the team is “heads-down” in integrating PeerDAS, which should reduce per-block bandwidth and open up room for higher gas limits and larger blob counts once deployed.

The report concluded that the telemetry from the first week of Pectra shows the 6/9 blob schedule functions as designed, giving client teams room to focus on Fusaka’s data-availability upgrades without immediate pressure to revisit bandwidth ceilings.

It’s been exactly two weeks since Ethereum successfully completed its Pectra upgrade, but the network has yet to feel the impact of the hard fork on user engagement.

According to an analysis by crypto data and insights platform Glassnode, Ethereum has not registered any new or returning users so far. In fact, user engagement has plunged since developers deployed the upgrade.

What Did the Pectra Upgrade Do?

Pectra introduced 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) geared towards improving user experience and creating a future-proof network. The upgrade brought the execution and consensus layers together after incorporating a range of technical improvements.

Following the success of Petra, traditional crypto wallets, also known as externally owned accounts, now behave like smart contracts, enabling account abstraction. Validators can stake more than 32 ether (ETH) and up to 2,048 ETH, while there is enhanced compatibility between layer-1 and layer-2 chains.

In addition, there are reduced data verification costs for layer-2 rollups, and nodes can verify large data availability without a full download. Users can also sponsor transaction costs and pay gas fees in crypto assets other than ETH.

It is worth mentioning that Pectra was initially scheduled to go live on April 30. However, several technical and finality issues resulted in developers pushing the date forward to May 7.

Ethereum User Engagement is Down

Since Petra went live, the average number of new and resurrected addresses has fallen compared to their year-to-date (YTD) values. New Ethereum addresses have fallen 1.8%, while the resurrected ones have plummeted 8.4%.

However, churned addresses have also declined by 8.5%. Churned addresses refer to wallets that previously held ETH but have reduced their balance to zero. This often happens when more users embrace private crypto storage options. Although Pectra has not brought in new or returning users so far, the plunge in churned addresses raises the question of whether this is part of a broader cycle trend, which remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s Realized Cap shows a reversal in a downward trend seen in the last three months. Glassnode noted that the metric, which tells the total capital stored in ETH, has risen from $240.8 billion to $244.6 billion since May 7, reflecting a $3.8 billion or 1.6% rise.

Top crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase will temporarily pause Ethereum (ETH) deposits and withdrawals in preparation for the network’s upcoming pectra upgrade.

Binance stated that ETH and tokens on Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Scroll, Worldcoin, and zkSync will be affected. The exchange pause starts at 09:45 (UTC).

The exchange furthered that while trading will continue without interruption, users won’t be able to move funds in or out during the upgrade window. This action helps prevent potential issues from forks or network reorganization.

Considering this, the exchange urged users planning to bridge or withdraw assets to act before the pause begins.

Coinbase echoed the same approach, confirming that ETH transfers will be suspended as a precaution during the upgrade process.

The Brian Armstrong-led exchange stated that new staking requests will be held until after 3:45 A.M. PT, though existing staked assets will remain untouched.

Ethereum’s pectra upgrade

The Pectra upgrade represents a significant technical milestone for Ethereum. It combines proposals from the Prague and Electra upgrades to streamline the user experience and developer operations.

Pectra integrates eight Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), with one significant change drawing attention.

The notable proposal, EIP-7702, introduces account abstraction. This feature allows regular crypto wallets to behave like smart contracts. As a result, users may eventually be able to pay gas fees using tokens other than ETH.

However, the road to this upgrade has not been smooth. Ethereum developers faced finalization issues on the Holesky testnet due to bugs linked to incorrect deposit contract addresses. These caused chain splits and instability.

A separate issue on the Sepolia testnet, triggered by custom deposit contracts, also disrupted block processing.

Due to these setbacks, the developers launched a new testnet called Hoodi to finalize tests.

Following successful test runs, Ethereum core developers confirmed that the Pectra upgrade will go live later today, May 7.

Despite the upgrade’s hype and anticipation, ETH’s price has barely moved. Data from CryptoSlate shows only a 1.5% rise over the past 24 hours, with the token trading at around $1,828 as of press time.

Mentioned in this article

The Pectra network upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Ethereum mainnet on May 07, 2025 at epoch 364032 (10:05:11 UTC)! Mainnet client releases are listed below.

Pectra Overview

Pectra follows last year’s Dencun upgrade. It introduces features to augment Ethereum accounts, improve the validator experience, support L2 scaling and more!

This post explores these three major improvements in detail. For a more comprehensive overview, see ethereum.org’s guide to the upgrade.

From EOAs to Smart Accounts

EIP-7702 represents a major step toward widespread account abstraction, enabling users to enhance their Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) with smart contract functionality.

This hybrid approach combines the simplicity of EOAs with the programmability of contract-based accounts. In practice, it enables wallets to support:

• Transaction batching, where multiple operations execute atomically within a single transaction. No more separate transactions for “approve” and “swap”!
• Gas sponsorship, which allows others to pay for transaction fees. This is especially useful when wanting to transact from an account that doesn’t have ETH in it.
• Alternative authentication, which means many hardware security modules (HSMs) in phones today can be used to authorize operations for the account via technologies like passkeys.
• Spending controls, which can limit how many tokens a specific application can spend, or cap daily outflows from a wallet, improving security.
• Recovery mechanisms, which provide different options for users to safeguard their assets, without migrating to a new account.

To use EIP-7702, an EOA signs an authorization pointing to a specific delegation address whose code it wants to execute. Once set, the account gains the new code’s capabilities (e.g., batching, sponsorship, authentication logic, etc.). Because choosing a delegation target hands over a great deal of control, EIP-7702 enforces several safety checks:

• Chain-specific delegations: by default, a delegation is only valid on a specific chain ID, preventing the same authorization from being used on different networks.
• Nonce-bound delegations: authorizations can be tied to the account’s current nonce, automatically invalidating them once the nonce increases.
• Revocability: the owner of the EOA can always create another EIP-7702 authorization that revokes or replaces the existing delegation code, preventing a permanent lock-in if something goes wrong.

For best practice on using EIP-7702, see this page.

Validator UX Improvements

Three new EIPs within Pectra improve the validator experience: 7251, 7002 and 6110.

The first, EIP-7251, raises the maximum balance a validator can receive rewards on from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, through an opt-in update of withdrawal credential type.

For stakers, this enables reward compounding. Previously, any rewards earned beyond a validator’s 32 ETH deposit would not count towards their active stake. Stakers who wanted to stake more than 32 ETH could only do so in fixed 32 ETH increments, relying on staking pools for anything in between. With EIP-7251, both existing and new validators can be configured to earn rewards on every ETH staked, up to 2048 ETH per validator.

This EIP also allows larger operators to consolidate multiple validators, by merging multiple 32 ETH validators. This reduces the bandwidth requirement for the network as a whole. To understand the mechanics in detail, see this page.

EIP-7002 also extends validators’ abilities, this time by introducing execution layer triggerable withdrawals. Prior to this EIP, only a validator’s active signing key could trigger an exit. Now, if an Ethereum address is set as a withdrawal credential, that too can force an exit. This reduces trust assumptions in delegation settings, as the owner of the funds — be they a human in control of an EOA or a DAO-managed smart contract — can always trustlessly initiate an exit.

Lastly, EIP-6110 removes a lingering vestige of pre-merge Ethereum: the delay between validator deposits and their addition to the deposit queue. Pre-merge, the Beacon Chain had to wait 2048 blocks before processing validator deposits to account for potential proof-of-work re-orgs. This is no longer necessary!

With EIP-6110, deposit processing delays now drop from around 9 hours to roughly 13 minutes. Teku engineers Lucas Saldanha and Stefan Bratanov covered the details of EIP-7002 and EIP-6110 in their joint Devcon SEA talk.

Blob Scaling .oO

The final major change in Pectra is EIP-7691, which doubles Ethereum’s blob throughput!

Blobs, introduced in the Dencun upgrade, are ephemeral data storage that L2s can use to submit compressed transaction data and proofs to Ethereum L1. Since going live, they’ve reduced L1 fees for L2s by 10-100x, resulting in far cheaper L2 user transactions.

The Ethereum mainnet currently supports an average of 3 blobs per block, with a maximum of 6 to accommodate periods of high demand. With EIP-7691, these numbers will increase to an average of 6 and maximum of 9.

Unlike CALLDATA, which nodes store indefinitely, blobs are pruned from the network after 4096 epochs (~18 days). This bounds the amount of disk space they can use. The binding constraint for blobs is instead bandwidth, as blobs need to be gossiped over Ethereum’s peer-to-peer layer. To offset the bandwidth increase caused by EIP-7691, Pectra also introduces EIP-7623, which caps the worst-case size of a block.

To continue scaling Ethereum’s data throughput without a corresponding rise in bandwidth requirements, we must shift from a world where every node stores every blob to one where nodes store only a subset and sample the network to verify the remaining blob data. Good news: work to support this is already underway! Francesco from the Ethereum Foundation Research team outlined this scaling roadmap in his Devcon keynote.

Pectra Specifications

The list of changes introduced in Pectra can be found in EIP-7600. For reference, they are:

Additionally, full python specification for the changes to the execution and consensus layer specifications can be found in the following releases:

Lastly, Pectra also introduces changes to the Engine API used for communication between the consensus and execution layer nodes. These are specified in the prague.md file of the repository.

Pectra Activation

The Pectra network upgrade will activate on the Ethereum mainnet at the start of epoch364032, happening on May 07, 2025 at 10:05:11 UTC.

It was previously activated on the Hoodi, Holesky and Sepolia testnets.

Client Releases

The following client releases are suitable for the Pectra upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet.

Consensus Layer Releases

When running a validator, both the Consensus Layer Beacon Node and Validator Client must be updated.

Execution Layer Releases

FAQ

How do Ethereum network upgrades work?

Ethereum network upgrades require explicit opt-in from node operators on the network. While client developers come to consensus on what EIPs are included in an upgrade, they are not the ultimate deciders of its adoption.

For the upgrade to go live, validators and non-staking nodes must manually update their software to support the protocol changes being introduced.

If they use an Ethereum client that is not updated to the latest version (listed above), at the fork block, it will disconnect from upgraded peers, leading to a fork on the network. In this scenario, each subset of the network nodes will only stay connected with those who share their (un)upgraded status.

While most Ethereum upgrades are non-contentious and cases leading to forks have been rare, the option for node operators to coordinate on whether to support an upgrade or not is a key feature of Ethereum’s governance.

For a more exhaustive overview of Ethereum’s governance process, see this talk by Tim Beiko.

As an Ethereum mainnet user or $ETH holder, is there anything I need to do?

In short, no.

If you use an exchange, digital wallet or hardware wallet you do not need to do anything unless you are informed to take additional steps by your exchange or wallet provider.

If you’d like to watch the upgrade go live, you can join the online viewing party!

As a non-staking node operator, what do I need to do?

To be compatible with the upgrade, update your node’s execution and consensus layer clients to the versions listed in the table above.

As a staker, what do I need to do?

To be compatible with the upgrade, update your node’s execution and consensus layer clients to the versions listed in the table above. Make sure both your beacon node and validator client are updated.

As an application or tooling developer, what should I do?

Review the EIPs included in Pectra to determine if and how they affect your project — there are many new exciting features being introduced across both the execution and consensus layers!

Why “Pectra”?

Upgrades to the execution layer follow Devcon city names, and those to the consensus layer use star names. “Pectra” is the combination of Prague, the location of Devcon IV, and Electra, a blue-white giant star in the constellation of Taurus.

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Original cover image by Julia Solonina, with modifications by Tomo Saito.

The final dress rehearsal for Ethereum’s upcoming Pectra upgrade occurred Wednesday, as the blockchain’s biggest changes in over a year were tested an additional time following a series of mishaps.

The upgrade on the new Hoodi testnet was closely watched given that two previous tests, on the Holesky and Sepolia test networks, failed to finalize properly.

Following those tests, developers created a new testnet, Hoodi, to give ecosystem players, particularly staking providers, one more testing opportunity before the Pectra upgrade hits Ethereum’s mainnet.

The test involved passing Hoodi a series of code changes meant to make Ethereum more user-friendly for both end-users as well as developers. One of those changes adds smart contract functionality to wallets, allowing wallet software developers to build new convenience-oriented features, like the ability to pay transaction fees in cryptocurrencies other than ether (ETH).

​​Testnets act as copies of a main blockchain, and are used by developers to run through any major code changes in a low stakes environment, giving them a place to patch out any bugs before they reach mainnet.

Hoodi was the last of three testnets to run through a simulation of Pectra. Developers previously agreed that if all went well on Wednesday, Pectra would be monitored for around 30 more days and then, finally, activated on Ethereum’s mainnet.

Read more: Hello, Hoodi: Ethereum Welcomes a New Testnet

At 7:29 UTC today, on epoch 222464, the Pectra network upgrade went live on the Sepolia testnet.

Unfortunately, an issue with Sepolia’s permissioned deposit contract prevented many execution layer clients from including transactions in blocks. The root cause was identified within minutes, and client teams immediately began working on a fix.

This issue is due to Sepolia’s configuration and could not occur on the Ethereum mainnet.

Around 14:00 UTC today, validators deployed a fix that restored the network to normal throughput.

All Sepolia node operators must now upgrade their execution layer clients to the versions listed below to maintain network compatibility.

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Execution Layer Sepolia & Holesky Releases

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This post will be updated with any further developments regarding the Sepolia Pectra deployment.

A postmortem will be available in the Pectra project management folder once the incident is resolved.

Ethereum’s long-awaited Pectra upgrade took a major step forward early Wednesday with its successful deployment on the Sepolia test network.

The biggest upgrade to Ethereum since 2024, Pectra consists of 11 major features, or “Ethereum improvement proposals” (EIPs), that will be shipped all at once. Together, the features aim to enhance staking, wallet functionality, and overall network efficiency.

Sepolia’s Pectra upgrade, which was completed at 07:29:36 UTC, followed a failed test on Ethereum’s Holesky testnet last week. A misconfiguration among validators resulted in a chain split, rendering Holesky temporarily unusable.

Testnets mimic a main blockchain and are used by developers to test code changes in a low-stakes environment. Holesky, which has a validator structure closer to Ethereum’s mainnet than Sepolia, was seen as a critical proving ground for Pectra. (Developers are still working to get Holesky back into operation and have set up an alternative developer network as a temporary testing ground for validators.)

Ethereum developers are set to meet on Mar. 6 to discuss Pectra’s mainnet release timeline. With only one fully successful test, developers may opt to delay the mainnet deployment to ensure stability.

One key Pectra proposal that will benefit Ethereum validators is EIP-7251, which increases the maximum amount of ETH one can stake from 32 to 2,048. The change is meant to address today’s clunky staking system, where validators who stake more than their 32 ETH must split their stake across multiple nodes.

Another highly-anticipated proposal, EIP-7702, would let crypto wallets temporarily function as smart contracts. The change moves Ethereum closer to account abstraction, enabling wallets to offer more user-friendly features. For example, users could pay transaction fees in stablecoins instead of ETH, set up automatic payments for subscriptions, or recover access to their wallets without relying on complex seed phrases.

Pectra’s rocky test cycle comes as Ethereum’s developers are under pressure to ship upgrades more quickly. Some Ethereum fans fear the network is losing its edge to newer chains like Solana, which has gained mindshare in recent months due to its popularity among meme coin users.

The price of ETH has also recently underperformed relative to other major coins, and the Ethereum Foundation—the non-profit steward of the network’s development—has been beset by leadership drama.

Read more: Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade Goes Live on ‘Holesky’ Testnet, but Fails to Finalize