Ethereum devs to kick off Pectra testing on Holesky

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade will go live on the Holesky testnet today at 9:55 pm UTC, allowing developers to test the new improvements before they hit the Ethereum mainnet.

The Ethereum Foundation said Pectra will go live on Holesky at epoch 115,968 and then on Sepolia at epoch 222,464 on March 5 at 7:29 am UTC. The organization said that once both testnets successfully upgrade to Pectra, a mainnet activation epoch will be chosen.

Pectra introduces features that augment Ethereum accounts, support layer-2 scaling and improve user experience for validators. 

The Pectra fork follows the network’s Dencun upgrade, which slashed transaction fees for layer-2 networks and improved the economics of Ethereum rollups. The Dencun hard fork rolled out on March 13, 2024, and was perceived as a big step for mass adoption.

Pectra upgrade to hit Holesky testnet 

According to the Ethereum Foundation, Pectra represents a major step toward account abstraction. One of the major changes includes EIP-3074, which enhances Ethereum account abstraction by allowing externally owned accounts (EOAs) to execute batch transactions and sponsored gas payments.

Gas sponsorship allows users to transact from an account without Ether (ETH) and alternative authentication, spending controls and other recovery mechanisms. 

In addition, the Pectra upgrade will increase Ethereum’s blob capacity by 50%. The mainnet currently supports an average of three blobs per block, which will increase to six after Pectra is deployed.

Blobs are ephemeral data storage used by layer-2 blockchains to submit compressed transaction data and proofs to the mainnet. Since blobs hit Ethereum, layer-2 transactions have become significantly cheaper. 

Furthermore, one Ethereum Improvement Proposal within Pectra will raise the maximum balance on which a validator can receive rewards. Currently, validators can deposit up to 32 ETH. With Pectra, this maximum balance will be extended to 2,048 ETH. 

Related: Ethereum Foundation deploys $120M to DeFi apps; community celebrates

Ethereum devs accelerate the roadmap

The deployment of Pectra on the testnet follows decisions from Ethereum developers to accelerate the network’s roadmap. On Feb. 13, ecosystem core developers and leaders favored deploying future protocol upgrades at a faster cadence in an “All Core Devs” meeting. 

Nixo Rokish, a member of the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol support team, said this means “less dilly-dallying about scope and more aggressively presented opinions.”