Barely a year after the Dencun upgrade, Ethereum developers are working hard to ship the network’s next upgrade. What was, however, supposed to be a collection of small changes has quickly ballooned into the network’s biggest hard fork to date, giving developers pause for thought.

After weeks of consideration, developers have taken a significant step to make things more workable.

Ethereum Pectra To Come in Two Packages

Core Ethereum developers have decided to split the Pectra hard fork into two sets of EIPs to simplify testing and minimize potential bugs. They made this decision during the All Core Devs 142nd Consensus Layer meeting on Thursday, September 19. 

During the call anchored by Alex Stokes, some developers raised concerns that this move would bring the team full circle as more EIPs would just likely be added to the second upgrade. At the same time, most agreed that they were unlikely to guarantee that no more EIPs would be added after the fact. Still, most agreed that it made no sense to delay upgrades users were clamoring for until developers could finally get more complex upgrades ready.

What Will Be Included in Ethereum’s Pectra 1

During the call, developers agreed that the first Pectra package will proceed with specifications currently available on Pectra devnet 3; this will include eight EIPs in total, the main stand out being EIP-7702, a proposal created by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The EIP has garnered attention as it intends to make it possible for traditional wallets to easily become smart wallets for the duration of certain transactions.

Developers set a rollout target for early 2025 for the first Pectra package.

What Will Be Included in Ethereum’s Pectra 2

While the composition of the second Pectra package could change, it looks set to include PeerDAS and EVM Object Format (EOF) EIPs at the moment. PeerDAS is short for Peer Data Availability Sampling, an upgrade geared towards offering even more data availability for rollups to ensure increased demand would not easily send costs soaring again.

The EOF is one of the most fundamental and delicate upgrades in the Pectra suite. It represents an update to Ethereum’s smart contract programming environment, the EVM. The upgrade aims to make the EVM more developer-friendly, but it carries the risk of breaking existing smart contracts.

On the Flipside 

The planned first Pectra package could still face delays if issues are discovered in testing.

Why This Matters

Pectra is the Ethereum network’s next major upgrade after Dencun. It promises to be the network’s largest hard fork yet, boasting several exciting UX and scaling features.

Source : DailyCoin - Sep 20, 2024