Ethereum developers have officially set test dates for Pectra, the network’s first upgrade in 11 months, which puts it on track for a potential release date for April.
Pectra will include a number of improvements – with a special focus on wallets and validators – but it comes in a period of increased control for Ethereum, which has recently been exposed to pressure from its community to focus and catch up on competitors.
Ethereum’s core builders decided on Thursday during their weekly “All Core Developers” calls to start testing Pectra on February 26 at Holeky TestNet, with a follow -up test on the network’s Sepolia test network scheduled for March 5.
If these tests succeed, the developers will be linked on March 6 to determine when to launch the upgrade officially. According to Tim Beiko, Protocol Support Lead at the Ethereum Foundation, developers expect the upgrade to hit Mainnet in early April.
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Pectra-a Portmanteau, representing two separate upgrades, Prague and Electra-clutter eight major improvements to the second largest blockchain. Among the most expected are the EIP-7702, which is believed to improve the user experience of crypto drawing books. The idea is part of a wider blockchain tendency called Account Abstraction, which includes a number of features intended to make use of wallets less clumsy (for example, by allowing users to pay gas fees in currencies other than ETH). In this case, addresses on Etheruem known as externally owned account (EOAS)-which include most user-controlled crypto-drawing books-be configured to support smart contract functionality and open the door to wallet developers to offer a number of quality services to their users.
Another important pectra feature, EIP-7251, will allow validators to increase the amount they can spell-from 32 to 2,048 ETH. The change will help large validators consolidate their node operations (currently requiring effort more than 32 ETH using multiple nodes). It will also help speed up the process of setting up a new knot-day system has led to weekly queues for validators to spin up new infrastructure.
The Ethereum Society has been exposed to an identity crisis in the last few weeks. Its native token, ether (ETH), is underpinned against other cryptocurrencies, and competitor networks such as Solana have drawn the attention and talent of the Ethereum-Ecosystem-the first programmable blockchain ever and still the most acted. In the midst of the controversy – much of it aimed at the Etheruem Foundation, which coordinates chain upgrades and is currently undergoing a large leadership rinse – hoping developers that Pectra will help put the network on a stable basis.
Read more: Ethereum developers finally plan ‘Pectra’ upgrade
