What’s Pectra? Pectra = Prague + Electra. It’s a major upgrade for Ethereum, aiming to boost both its speed and scalability.

How’s It Being Developed? The dev teams tested out 100+ testnets at the Nyota Interop event in Kenya—narrowing more than 20 ideas down to 11 big improvements that made the final cut for Pectra.

Key Features Coming With Pectra:

EIP-7702: Turning regular wallets into smart wallets

• You’ll be able to bundle multiple actions into a single transaction (like bridging assets and swapping, or buying an NFT and sending it—all in one go).

• Conditional payments (only pay if certain criteria are met).

• Support for gasless transactions (someone else can pay your gas fees). → Basically, wallets are about to get way more flexible and powerful.

EIP-2537: Adding bls12-381 math

• Makes zero-knowledge proofs (zk tech) faster, which boosts privacy and scalability.

• Smarter staking. → Think of it as upgrading from using a calculator to having a modern computer.

EIP-2935: Storing block history

• Now Ethereum can “remember” old data for months, not just a week.

• This helps apps that need historical data and lets light clients run more efficiently. → It’s the first step toward a “stateless” Ethereum, so nodes don’t have to store everything forever.

EIP-6110: Smoother staking

• Removes delays when depositing for staking, so validators get their funds faster.

EIP-7002: More control for validators

• Validators can now use two types of keys (withdrawal and signing) to exit staking, making fund management easier.

• Better decentralization for big staking pools, like Lido.

EIP-7251: Raising the staking cap

• Max stake goes from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. More rewards for validators, fewer validators needed, which streamlines the network.

EIP-7549: Better validator voting

• Batches up voting signatures, slashing validator workload down by 60x without compromising security.

EIP-7623: Tweaking calldata costs

• Power users who use a lot of calldata will pay higher gas fees, keeping the network load balanced.

EIP-7685: Direct communication between layers

• Sets up a “hotline” between the execution layer (EL) and the consensus layer (CL), paving the way for smoother upgrades in the future.

EIP-7691 + EIP-7840: Upgrading blob handling

• Increases the number of blobs per block from 3 to 6, which means lower gas for rollups, higher throughput, and cheaper costs for users.

Conclusion

Pectra is a huge step for Ethereum, massively improving its scalability, staking, and wallet features, getting the network ready for whatever’s next!