After the Dencun upgrade, the Ethereum network is all set for yet another, dubbed ‘Pectra,’ which represents a fusion of ‘Prague’ and ‘Electra,’ denoting its execution and consensus layers, respectively.
Slated to roll out between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025, Pectra will incorporate significant Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), including the widely anticipated EIP-7251 (maxEB) and EIP-3074 (account abstraction), among others.
Ethereum Gears Up For Pectra Upgrade
Ethereum validators face challenges due to the 32 ETH balance limit, which complicates large-scale staking and restricts rewards on balances exceeding this threshold all the way to stake up to 2,048 ETH.
However, the Pectra upgrade addresses these issues, offering flexibility and efficiency in staking processes, and is expected to be crucial for platforms such as Coinbase as well as entities managing multiple validators.
EIP-7251, also known as “maxeb,” seeks to raise the maximum effective balance for validators to mitigate network instability risks. While considered a “game-changing” proposal, debates continue regarding this EIP’s potential impact on network decentralization and validator diversity.
The next Ethereum network upgrade is codenamed ‘Pectra’ or ‘Petra’.
This is an amalgamation of the name ‘Prague’ which is given to the execution layer part of the upgrade and ‘Electra’ which is given to the consensus layer part of the upgrade.
Pectra is slated to go live in Q4…
— sassal.eth/acc (@sassal0x) April 12, 2024
EIP-3074 Controversy
The recently approved EIP-3074 proposal, which is the newest addition in Pectra, has raised alarm over security issues. Developer 0xngmi from Anonymous DefiLlama also expressed similar concerns, stating that the downside of the EIP will now make it “possible to fully drain an address (all tokens, all NFTs, all DeFi positions…) with only one bad signature.”
Ansgar Dietrichs, from the Ethereum Foundation, expressed mixed feelings regarding the imminent arrival of EIP-3074 onto the mainnet nearly four years after its original proposal. Reflecting on the arduous journey, Dietrichs recalled the efforts invested in advocating for its adoption back in 2021, which proved fruitless at the time. Now, with significant progress made along the account abstraction roadmap, he is uncertain about the strategy.
“I am mostly worried that we will be building two parallel account tech stacks now with 3074/EOA and 4337/AA. And it will require a lot of effort and attention to make those interoperable, otherwise, we end up in a world where dapps have to support separate standards for everything.”
He further stressed that EIP-3074 was never intended as an account abstraction proposal but as a useful stopgap. It falls short of providing full account abstraction, as an ECDSA key remains integral to the process. Given these considerations, he instead advocated for prioritizing EIP-4337 as the route to achieving “full account abstraction.”
However, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams believes EIP-3074’s inclusion will be a “monumental upgrade” to Ethereum UX. The exec even went on to add that,
“Industry should make an effort to create compatibility for 4337 wallets to interact with 3074 contracts (much like eip1271 has created compatibility between safes and EOAs today.”
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