Ethereum — the network that unleashed smart contracts on the world — moves on to the next chapter with today’s Pectra upgrade, but what does it mean?
Pectra is scheduled to go live on Ethereum mainnet at the start of epoch 364032, May 7, 2025, at about 10:00 am UTC. The three main Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs) included are EIP-7702, EIP-7251 and EIP-7691.
EIP-7702 allows externally owned accounts to act as smart contracts and cover gas expenses (transaction fees) and payments in tokens that are not Ether (ETH). EIP-7251 increases the validator staking limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, which makes operations for large stakers easier and simpler.
Lastly, EIP-7691 increases the number of data blobs per block, which allows for better layer-2 scalability and potentially significantly reduces transaction fees. Sergej Kunz, co-founder of Ethereum decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch, said Pectra “introduces ‘smart account’ functionality” at deeper protocol levels and “improves Ethereum’s scalability” through layer-2 solutions.
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Better account abstraction
0xAw, lead developer at Base Ethereum layer-2 DEX Alien.Base told Cointelegraph that EIP‑7702 “is a potentially great addition for Ethereum.” He explained that account abstraction has so far been unable to gain traction due to the need to switch wallets.
The positives of adopting such a solution include “getting rid of approval flows, not having to sign each transaction, segregated permissions and actions, and automations on behalf of the user.” 0xAw also explained that, following the update, developers will have an easier time implementing the features.
While account attraction “won’t magically result in mass adoption,” it still “does remove a significant barrier to entry for new people.” He added:
“It enables a Web2-like UX by hiding many of the underlying scaffolding from users.”
1inch’s Kunz highlighted that the update will pave “the way for native gasless transactions and simplified user flows.” Ivo Georgiev, founder and CEO of self-custodial smart wallet Ambire, told Cointelegraph that “there will be no more infinite ERC-20 approvals, and users won’t need native currency like ETH to pay transaction gas fees.” He added:
“Following this, the UX will be reworked completely, with permissions/delegations systems that let wallets give more limited abilities to apps, thus increasing their overall security — for example, you won’t need the wallet popup every time you interact with OpenSea.“
Still, the change is not without its downsides. According to 0xAw, it gives “users have one more dangerous thing they could sign, which would be even more damaging than an approval to wallet drainers.”
Mike Tiutin, chief technology officer at onchain compliance protocol PureFi, told Cointelegraph that “drainers proved that users will sign ‘harmless’ messages in cloned DApps.” The risk will now get worse:
“EIP-7702 expands that trick from one token to the whole wallet.“
Georgiev is more optimistic, saying he is “confident there will not be a tangible increase in risk.” He explained, “By this point, the industry knows how to create a secure contract, especially with such a minimal scope as an EIP-7702 delegation.”
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Easier institutional staking
Artemiy Parshakov, vice president of institutions at Ethereum staking service P2P.org, told Cointelegraph, “EIP-7002 makes institutional staking much easier to integrate without taking too much risk.” Staking service clients had to obtain a signed message from their staking service provider to be able to exit and store it securely for later.
Until Pectra, stakers could not exit without the participation of the staking service provider. Those messages also couldn’t be generated until about 13 hours after starting staking — now this exit delay will be decreased to about 13 minutes.
Supply validator deposits onchain
Another notable upgrade is EIP-6110. This makes the execution‑layer block carry data about new validator deposits to the consensus layer. Validator deposits are new validators joining Ethereum’s staking protocol.
Until Pectra, consensus clients waited for block proposers to vote on a Merkle root that summarized deposits. Now, the execution-layer block includes (supplies) a list of new verifier deposits.
This sort of upgrade makes changes very deep into Ethereum’s consensus layer, and its introduction follows client bugs breaking the Holesky and Sepolia Ethereum test networks. Still, Parshakov explained that his firm’s biggest concern “are client bugs, but we trust that respectable teams and the Ethereum Foundation are working together to prevent it from happening on mainnet.”
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