A Closer Look To Ethereum Pectra Upgrade

Ethereum has successfully deployed the Pectra upgrade on the Sepolia Testnet, promising major innovations for the Ethereum ecosystem and the broader blockchain industry. Based on past upgrade experiences, what impact could the Pectra upgrade trigger?

Update about Ethereum Pectra upgrade

On the afternoon of March 5, 2025, Ethereum announced the successful deployment of the Ethereum Pectra upgrade on the Sepolia testnet. Sepolia is the final major testing phase before Pectra goes live on the mainnet, which is expected to happen in April.

Ethereum Pectra is considered one of the biggest upgrades in Ethereum’s history. It combines Prague (which improves transaction processing speed) and Electra (which enhances the consensus mechanism).

However, the latest deployment didn’t go smoothly. The core developer of Ethereum Foundation, Tim Beiko, had announced a mistake during the updating process and their effort to fix it.

Sepolia Incident Update 📣

We’ve identified and deployed a fix for the Sepolia deposit contract issue found earlier today. This issue was cause by Sepolia’s custom permissioned contract, which is different than mainnet.

All node operators must upgrade their nodes to the…

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 5, 2025

Today, Ethereum would hold a developer meeting to finalize the mainnet launch timeline for Pectra. If everything goes smoothly and the issues are fixed, the upgrade will roll out in April as originally planned. 

Alongside significant technological advancements, ETH’s price has also shown positive momentum. Just 24 hours after the event, ETH is trading around $2,215, up nearly 6%.

Despite this strong rebound following the Pectra upgrade news, ETH has been down nearly 30% since early February, impacted by macroeconomic factors and the Bybit hack. On the evening of March 4, ETH even dropped below $2,000 for the first time since November 2023.

Pectra Upgrade and Ethereum’s past Major Upgrade

Ethereum Major Upgrade

As Ethereum continues to grow and capture a larger market share, Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) play an increasingly crucial role in shaping the network’s future. They aim to enhance various aspects of the Ethereum Protocol, ensuring the network improves over time. Proposed changes and new features for the Consensus Layer (CL) and Execution Layer (EL) must be thoroughly documented in an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP).

Throughout its development, Ethereum has reviewed and implemented numerous EIPs. However, some standout EIPs have introduced groundbreaking innovations to the network, including:

• EIP-721: Introduced the ERC-721 token standard, laying the foundation for NFTs on Ethereum.
• EIP-1559: Redesigned Ethereum’s fee structure by implementing a base fee mechanism, improving transaction processing and prioritization, and aiming to reduce user fees on the network.
• EIP-3785 – The Merge (September 6, 2022): The Ethereum Merge, one of the biggest milestones in Ethereum’s history, marked the full transition from PoW to PoS. All smart contracts and transaction data shifted to the PoS network, successfully completing Ethereum’s move away from mining. Beacon Chain was completely integrated into Ethereum’s original blockchain, reducing energy consumption by approximately 99.95%.
• EIP-4844 – Dencun (March, 2024): Combination of Deneb and Cancun, this upgrade introduced “proto-danksharding”, improved scalability, and significantly decreased gas fee on layer-2 (rollups). Therefore, transactions on Ethereum’s layer-2 would be cheaper and faster.

Overview of Pectra Upgrade

Pectra Upgrade is the combination of Electra (name of Consensus Layer upgrade) and Prague (name of a Execution Layer upgrade). There are two main phases of Pectra upgrade:

• Phase 1 (2025): Focuses on staking upgrades (EIP-7251), wallet experience improvements (EIP-7702), and faster deposit and withdrawal times for validators.
• Phase 2 (Fusaka – 2026): Introduces EVM Object Format and PeerDAS, enhancing performance and security. Ethereum node operators will need to update their clients, but ETH holders don’t need to take any action.

Some significant improvement proposals in the Pectra upgrade:

• EIP-7251: Validators will be able to stake more ETH (from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH), increasing their reward potential. Ethereum will also expand blob space by 50%, making transactions and data processing faster and cheaper.
• EIP-7702: Bring Account Abstraction to users with several functions, such as: upgrading regular crypto wallets (EOA, e.g., MetaMask) to function more like smart contract wallets, adding better security and advanced features, gas fee sponsorship, convenient trade with Passkey, etc.

Overall, Pectra introduces significant improvements to the Ethereum ecosystem, including enhanced wallet interfaces, increased staking limits for validators, and better rollup performance.

Impact of upgrades to ETH price movement

Most of Ethereum’s past upgrades have had a significant impact on ETH’s price movement, depending on the development team’s orientation. For example, The Merge generated strong buying pressure for ETH, driving its price upward. Additionally, the event helped bring users back to NFTs, GameFi, and Ethereum-based NFTs, attracting new capital into the ecosystem and having a positive impact on ETH’s price movement.

On the other hand, the Dencun upgrade has opened massive potentials for Layer 2 development and transactions. Since Dencun, the number of transactions on Layer 2 has grown by an average of 93% after 3 months and 101% after 6 months. Base and Arbitrum saw the most impressive growth, surging 460% and 144% respectively, within 6 months post-Dencun.

However, the upgrade triggered major changes in Ethereum’s economy: lower demand for ETH as a transaction fee, reduced ETH burn rate, and decreased value for Ethereum validators. Additionally, the Ethereum ecosystem has no significant trends (for example, GameFi, Airdrop, or Meme) at that time, leading to a lower ETH gas fee and the huge gap between the supply source and the ETH burned. All these shifts have sparked debates over ETH’s value accumulation and Ethereum inflation.

Therefore, with the potential that the Pectra upgrade brings, investors hope this event can once again boost ETH’s price, especially after the Bybit hack, which sent ETH to a record low. However, investors should closely monitor market conditions and have well-prepared risk management strategies for any possible scenario.