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The ethereum Foundation developers anticipate that the Pectra upgrade will launch on the mainnet around March 2025.
In a January 16 call, known as Execution Layer Meeting 203, led by Tim Beiko, protocol support lead at the ethereum Foundation (eth), developers reviewed progress on the Pectra upgrade, which will roll out after the Dencun update.
The team confirmed that Pectra Devnet5, a specialized developer testnet created for ethereum developers to test the Pectra upgrade, is now available.
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https://twitter.com/terencechain/status/1879892324353991052
What problems will the Pectra update solve?
The Pectra upgrade is a critical step in addressing some of the core issues facing ethereum, such as scaling issues. Previously, on March 28, the founder of ethereum himself, Vitalik Buterin, <a target="_blank" href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/03/28/blobs.html” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>pointed to these challenges. Network cooling during peak user traffic has led to slow transaction times and an increase in gas fees due to the limit on high-volume transaction capacity.
To change this, Pectra would work to improve the efficiency of ethereum's consensus layer by creating a smoother transaction validation process and mitigating bottlenecks.
Ensuring this would ensure that ethereum remains reliable as the blockchain continues to become quite sophisticated. “High demand is driving up transaction fees, making ethereum expensive for the average user. The disk space required to run an ethereum client is growing at a rapid rate,” the ethereum report reads. <a target="_blank" href="https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/vision/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>roadmap
While the Pectra upgrade alone does not directly affect gas prices, it will lay the groundwork for other, cheaper future upgrades.
Layer 2 solutions, such as Arbitrum (ARB) and Optimism (OP), take transactions off-chain and are already working to reduce gas fees. Petra will reduce network load and pressure by promoting efficiency during peak hours.
Additionally, an important part of the Pectra update is that it introduces accessibility. By guiding the hardware requirements for validators, it will be easy for people to be part of the team responsible for securing the blockchain. This democratization results in greater decentralization, which promotes greater security for the blockchain as a whole.
When will the Pectra update be released?
Assuming the testing phases proceed normally, the Pectra upgrade is currently planned for mainnet activation, possibly in March 2025, according to the January 9 call.
As previously reported, the Pectra update has already been released on the Mekong testnet in November 2024, the developers plan to finalize a release schedule as soon as the remaining issues on Pectra Devnet 5 and public testnets such as Sepolia and Holesky are resolved in February 2025.
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However, the developers have said that delays could occur should major bugs or other compatibility issues be detected during public testnet updates. For now, the first test on the fork is tentatively scheduled for the week of February 12. However, the timing of the second test will depend on the customer's launch schedule, Beiko said.
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