Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH holds steady as Pectra upgrade goes live on mainnet

Ethereum price today: $1,790

• Ethereum's Pectra upgrade went live on Wednesday, introducing features from eleven EIPs to mainnet.
• The major L1 changes Pectra introduced include improved user experience, staking efficiency and blobspace expansion.
• ETH technical indicators exhibit bearish signs as the top altcoin moves toward the end of a symmetrical triangle.

Ethereum (ETH) held steady on Wednesday after the Pectra upgrade went live on mainnet. The upgrade, which introduced several features to Ethereum, failed to spark increased volatility as ETH continued trading near the $1,800 mark.

Pectra upgrade goes live without any issues

After several delays and testnet hiccups, Ethereum's Pectra upgrade went live at epoch 364032 around 10:05 GMT, introducing code changes from eleven Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to mainnet.

The large number of EIPs makes Pectra Ethereum's most ambitious upgrade since The Merge — its transition from a Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake consensus model in August 2022. Pectra comes after the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which activated EIP-4844's proto-danksharding — blobspaces — on the L1.

Pectra faced initial delays after its activation on the Holesky testnet. The network failed to finalize due to configuration issues in several execution layer (EL) clients. However, developers eventually completed testing via the Sepolia and newly launched Hoodi testnets.

Launched as the combination of the Prague execution layer and Electra consensus layer upgrades, the major changes from Pectra include improved user experience, staking efficiency and increased throughput in layer 2s (L2s).

"For years, Ethereum upgrades made the network work better. Pectra makes it feel better," said Binji Pande, Superchain Growth Lead at Optimism. "It's Ethereum's glow-up: not just bigger, but smoother, smarter, and more accessible."

Some of the key EIPs in Pectra and their functions include:

EIP-7702 - First step to account abstraction:

Co-authored by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, EIP-7702 lays the groundwork for account abstraction, temporarily allowing regular wallets — or Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) — to exhibit smart contract functionality. Users can combine several actions into one transaction to reduce fees and complexities. Third parties can cover gas fee payments, allowing users to perform on-chain transactions without owning any crypto.

"The impact will be especially powerful in L2 and L3 environments, where developers can design experiences where the user doesn't even need to think about wallets or gas," Preston Van Loon, co-founder of Prysmatic Labs, told FXStreet.

EIP-7702 will also allow gas fee payments in other ERC-20 tokens apart from ETH and it will introduce social recovery, enabling users to recover their keys through trusted parties.

EIP-7251 - Increase the maximum staking limit

The EIP focuses on improving staking efficiency by increasing the maximum staking effective balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. Instead of running multiple nodes with a fixed 32 ETH stake, large-scale validators can consolidate their holdings within a few nodes to reduce hardware requirements and maximize gains.

“This especially benefits early stakers or those just above the 32 ETH threshold, turning otherwise idle capital into productive capital,” said Loon.

The potential decreased validator size via the upgrade will also reduce the strain on the network. However, some have argued that the increase could lead to centralization among validators with larger staking balances.

EIP-7691 - Blobspace expansion

The EIP will scale Ethereum's data availability (DA) by increasing the target and maximum blobs per block from 3 and 6 to 6 and 9, respectively. This would allow rollups or L2s to post more data to the L1 while keeping costs low. Some have criticized the move, arguing that it would hurt Ethereum’s revenue and value accrual, which has been on a downtrend following the introduction of blobs in the Dencun upgrade.

With Pectra activated, developers have turned attention to the Fusaka upgrade, which is expected to go live by the end of 2025.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH technical indicators show bearish signs

Ethereum saw $47.90 million in futures liquidations in the past 24 hours, per Coinglass data. The total amount of long and short liquidations is $18.51 million and $29.38 million, respectively.

After a brief decline to $1,750 earlier on Tuesday, ETH bulls pushed prices back above the lower boundary of a symmetrical triangle, strengthened by the 14-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) and 50-day Simple Moving Average (SMA). Following the Pectra upgrade, ETH surged above the triangle, but bears quickly pushed prices back toward the $1,800 level.

ETH/USDT daily chart

With ETH moving toward the end of the symmetrical triangle, prices are slightly tilted toward the downside. A daily candlestick close below the 14-day EMA and 50-day SMA could accelerate the downtrend. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) also exhibits bearish signs after declining below its yellow moving average line. A firm decline below its neutral level will validate a bearish outlook.

Meanwhile, the Stochastic Oscillator (Stoch) is testing its neutral level, indicating weakening bullish momentum.