Ethereum is about to officially launch its most important upgrade since Dencun 2024, as the development team has set the Pectra mainnet deployment date for 07/05/2025. This decision was made during the "Consensus Layer Meeting 154" held on the evening of 03/04/2025, right after this upgrade was successful on the Hoodi testnet.
Pectra Testing Phases
Initially, Pectra was expected to launch on two main testnets: Holesky (late February) and Sepolia (early March) before officially deploying on the mainnet. However, serious issues arose when the testnets could not complete transaction validation, forcing Ethereum to create an additional testnet, Hoodi.
Testing on Hoodi has gone smoothly, paving the way for the official deployment #Pectra of the mainnet in May 2025.
Important Upgrade Points of Pectra
Pectra is one of the two largest upgrades of Ethereum since Dencun 2024, focusing on staking, user experience, and network performance. The upgrade includes 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (#EIP ), notably:
EIP-7251: Increasing the staking limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, allowing validators to easily enhance their capacity.
EIP-7702: Upgrading user wallet experience, replacing EIP-3074.
EIP-7691, EIP-7623, EIP-7840: Improving security and transaction speed.
EIP-6110, EIP-7685, EIP-2537, EIP-2935, EIP-7549: Supporting validators to deposit and withdraw ETH faster.
Ethereum Development Roadmap
Ethereum plans to implement two upgrade phases in the near future:
Pectra - Part 1 (2025): Enhancing staking, user wallet experience.
Fusaka - Part 2 (2026): Integrating major improvements such as EVM Object Format (EOF) and PeerDAS.
Expectations for ETH After Pectra
The implementation of Pectra is expected to help $ETH "revitalize," similar to the significant previous upgrades like The Merge 2022 and Dencun 2024. However, the current ETH price is still affected by economic impacts, trading around 1,785 USD, down 6.3% in the last 24 hours and losing 13% over the past month due to concerns about the tax policies of the Trump administration.
The upcoming Pectra mainnet event on 07/05 will be a significant turning point for Ethereum and the ecosystem of dApps, staking pools, and ETH investors.