The Ethereum Pectra upgrade – Vitalik Buterin shares key insights

Ethereum is gaining momentum ahead of the upcoming Pectra upgrade. Vitalik Buterin has revealed key details about the upgrade, one of which is the confirmed date of March 2025.

In addition to the confirmed date, the Ethereum co-founder mentioned that the upgrade will increase the blob target from 3 to 6. This will double the capacity of Layer 2 networks.

Pectra, expected in March, will increase the blob target from 3 to 6, doubling the capacity of L2s.

IMO we should make the blob target also staker-voted, so that it can increase in respose to technology improvements without waiting for hard forks.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 4, 2025

This announcement came after statistics showed Ethereum’s gas limit had exceeded 32 million. The increasing gas cap is significant because it enables validators to handle more transactions in each block. 

The good news is that almost half, 49.5%, of Ethereum blocks, are showing support for raising the gas cap.

The co-founder of Ethereum also mentioned important progress on Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4444. The proposal will make old data expire and move towards a system without a state. It will introduce a new binary tree plan.

The Pectra upgrade – Details

The upgrade is centered on helping Ethereum users. Apparently, it is intended to make the Ethereum network faster, more scalable, and easier to use. In addition, tools such as Verkle trees and PeerDAS would cut costs.

Now to the technical part. For status, this upgrade involves up to 20 changes called Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). The upgrade has been divided into two parts. 

Pectra is temporarily easing scaling problems by increasing the amount of blobs for data availability from three to six. 

Mallesh Pai, a senior head of research at Consensys, says that the plan to double blobs wasn’t considered just six months ago. However, even with this change, it won’t be enough to handle the high demand from L2s.

Still, there is another upgrade that will support it. Fusaka fork, scheduled for later this year will feature an upgrade known as Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS). This will be the most crucial adjustment for scalability.

PeerDAS is an advanced version of “proto-danksharding.” It allows L2 solutions to store data in blobs. This means they won’t compete with layer 1 (L1) transactions for room in blocks. 

Proto-danksharding concentrates on optimizing data availability for roll-ups within the Ethereum network. It is a type of sharding that serves as the final phase of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. 

Still, EIP-4844 requires full nodes to download all blobs from a block and verify that no data is missing from a particular blob.

PeerDAS will make it possible because it breaks down the job of saving and checking blob data into smaller parts. In fact, Buterin says that the number of blobs will quickly increase by 2 to 4 times, and then it could grow to 8 times or more in the future. 

The upgrade is also expected to improve the usability. EIP-7702 lets current Ethereum accounts easily switch to smart accounts or account abstraction with just one click. The long-standing requirement to sign two transactions for “approve” and “swap” to complete an Ethereum transaction will be fixed.

Next is the validator staking limits increase with the EIP-7251. This means that the network’s overall health is significantly enhanced by the increase in the validator stake limit from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH.

Finally, the EIP-7002. This is the delegated Ethereum staking without permission. The upgrade supports security of delegated ETHstaking. It improves the control of Lido and RocketPool over rogue node operators. It will also enable staked ETH token holders to withdraw funds without the permission of the node operators that operate validators on their behalf.

Trump’s son Eric Trump roots for Ethereum 

Ethereum has been in the trenches for a minute. ETH has taken hits following Trump’s tariff actions in recent days. However, Eric Trump took the opportunity to tell traders what a good time it was to buy Ethereum. 

His first post was very convincing, stating, “You can thank me later.” The comment was taken down, maybe to seem less convincing than before. Or that his father’s administrative actions had anything to do with red trading markets.

In my opinion, it’s a great time to add $ETH.

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) February 3, 2025

Also, World Liberty Financial, a DeFi project linked to the president’s family, has recently moved $307.41 million to Coinbase for safekeeping and changed 20,000 Lido staked ETH back into regular ETH.

In addition, it acquired 1,826 ETH for $5 million USDC. Analysts say the money could be used to help Earn and Borrow, a loan system that WLF plans to launch soon. 

After a sharp drop on Monday, the price of ETH has recovered by 13%. It now sits at $2744, a 5% surge in the last 24hrs. 

Cryptopolitan Academy: How to Write a Web3 Resume That Lands Interviews - FREE Cheat Sheet