Original title: Everything you need to know about Pectra: the new Ethereum Upgrade
Original author: @francescoweb3, co-founder of castle labs
Compiled by: zhouzhou, BlockBeats

Editor’s note:This article introduces the Pectra upgrade, which is a major improvement for Ethereum and is divided into three main areas: improving Ethereum accounts, improving the verifier experience, and expanding data blocks. The article details multiple EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposals), including EIP-7702, EIP-7251, etc., to improve account functions, reduce the complexity of validator operations, and improve network efficiency. In addition, it also discusses how to expand the network by increasing the data block capacity, gradually achieve the goal of stateless clients, and promote the security and scalability of the Ethereum network.

The following is the original content (the original content has been compiled for ease of reading and understanding):

Ethereum is improving account capabilities, simplifying network verification, and improving block efficiency. This article introduces Pectra, a highly anticipated upgrade that has brought many new Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), the first phase of which is already online.

Launched on February 24 in Holesky

Launched on March 5th in Sepolia

Once the implementation is successful, the main network update date will be determined. We can expect mainnet updates between 3 and 9 months after testnet implementation. Pectra is a fairly important upgrade that brings multiple EIP improvements:

We can divide these improvements into three key areas:

·Improve Ethereum accounts

·Ability to expand data blocks

Let’s take an in-depth look at some of the upcoming EIPs and how they can enhance the Ethereum protocol and user experience.

Improving Ethereum account: EIP-7702

EIP-7702 advances Ethereum’s protocol layer into account abstraction. It adds smart contract features by extending Ethereum’s Externally Owned Account (EOA) capabilities, including:

·Batch transaction processing: perform multiple operations in one transaction

·More authentication and recovery mechanisms

Improving the user experience for Ethereum verifiers: EIP-7251/7002/6110

· EIP-7251: Increase the maximum balance of verifiers to 2048 ETH and allow them to automatically compound rewards on larger active pledges. Previously, rewards only considered the balance of 32 ETH. In addition, larger validators can now merge multiple 32ETH validators into one.

·ˇEIP-7002: Reduced trust assumptions by allowing execution-level addresses to trigger withdrawals (as long as it is set to a “withdrawable certificate”). Previously, only the validator could trigger an exit.

· EIP-6110: Removed the 2048-block delay for validator deposits and their addition to the queue. This time is expected to be reduced from 9 hours to 13 minutes.

Extended data block: EIP-7691

As the cost of data blocks rises, so does the need to expand data blocks.

With EIP-7691, data block capacity will be increased by 50%: currently, each Ethereum block can accommodate approximately 3 data blocks (up to 6 during peak demand periods). After implementing EIP-7691, it will support an average of 6 data blocks, up to 9 blocks in times of high demand.

The next step in further expanding data blocks is to reduce the need to store all data blocks and move to subnets, which can still be used to verify data block data.

Other EIPs in Pectra include:

·EIP-2537: Increase the number of security bits for operations to more than 120 bits, currently more than 80 bits.

·EIP-2935: Preparing stateless clients, which recommends storing historical block hashes in state as part of the block processing logic. Through contract storage implementation, EIP allows for smooth transitions without affecting block hash logic. Rollup will be able to benefit from a longer history and query storage contracts directly.

·EIP-7549: This AIP focuses on improving the efficiency of Casper clients. This is achieved by reducing the number of pairings needed to verify consensus, especially by removing one of three elements in the Casper client authentication message: the committee index. By moving them out of the authentication message, consensus votes can now be aggregated into blocks more efficiently, increasing the number of votes per block from 2 slots to 8.

·EIP-7623: EIP-7623 proposes to increase the cost of calldata and is one of the developments that have a greater impact on L2. The proposal aims to adjust the cost of calling data to account for differences between the average (100KB) and maximum chunk size (7.15 MB). This will not affect ordinary users and only involves transactions that are mainly used to publish data.

This increase will be introduced through a base fee that depends on the rate of gas consumed in invoking data operations: reducing the block size to accommodate more data blocks, or increasing the gas limit.

EIP-7685: Introduce a framework to store requests triggered by smart contracts. This allows a validator controlled by a smart contract to delegate management operations to the latter, reducing the need for intermediaries.

·EIP-2935: Preparing stateless clients, which recommends storing historical block hashes in state as part of the block processing logic. Through contract storage implementation, EIP allows for smooth transitions without affecting block hash logic. Rollup will be able to benefit from a longer history and query storage contracts directly.

The focus of this upgrade is an important signal for Ethereum; we know that these improvements began a long time ago and are not a response to recent criticism. However, focusing on simplifying network security, improving Ethereum account functionality and the ability to expand data blocks is one of the key development directions needed to realize Ethereum.

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