Ethereum Pectra Upgrade Takes Shape as Crucial EIP Approved

Christine Kim, vice president of Galaxy Digital, shared the recap of Ethereum All Core Developers Execution Call #201. On Dec. 5, 2024, Ethereum (ETH) became one step closer to setting up its final agenda for Pectra (Prague-Electra), its most ambitious update since The Merge. Also, Ethereum ACD Consensus call approved a crucial EIP for blobs.

Ethereum (ETH) devs agreed on major Pectra agenda point

EIP-7691: Blob Throughput Increase will be finally included in the agenda of Prague-Electra (Pectra), a hotly-anticipated Ethereum (ETH) hard fork of 2025-2026. Ethereum ACDC call approved this decision, as unveiled by Christine Kim in a recent X thread.

regarding PECTRA, a lot has happened over the last 2 weeks, here’s the latest on eth’s next upgrade:

— Christine Kim (@christine_dkim) December 6, 2024

The EIP is expected to increase to the number of blobs in a block to provide more scale to Ethereum via L2 solutions that rely on L1 data capacity. After the activation of EIP-7691, the target and maximum number of blobs per block will be increased to six and nine, respectively.

Blob is a unique data structure introduced by Dencun upgrade. It includes large data chunks that are stored on-chain to optimize data logistics. The original target and maximum values from EIP-4844 mechanism were at a 1:2 ratio.

Also, EIP-7623: Increase Calldata Cost, co-authored by Vitalik Buterin, is officially included in the agenda of the Pectra hard fork. By adjusting calldata cost, the proposal aims to reduce the maximum block size to make room for adding more blobs.

By contrast, EIP-7762, focused on making blob gas market more flexible during peak network congestion, remains up to further discussion.

What is Pectra and how it will change Ethereum (ETH)

Networking EIP-7639 and retroactive EIP-4803 are also submitted for more discussions, but still might be included in the Pectra road map.

Besides that, developers informed that the Mekong testnet was hit by unforeseen challenges that are fixed by now. The process of testing is set to migrate toward Devnets 5 and 6.

As covered by U.Today in a guide, Ethereum Pectra Upgrade has the largest agenda in the history of the post-Merge network. It includes dozens of EIPs and Meta EIPs.

Largely, they advance data logistics, L1/L2 interaction and make the fee structure of Ethereum (ETH) more predictable.

The first phase of the update is expected to be activated in 2025, while the second phase arrives in 2026.

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