Prague-Electra (or Pectra) upgrade is going to advance security, scalability and performance developments accomplished by Cancun-Deneb. While its final agenda and activation date are still being discussed, Pectra is expected to be among the most radical upgrades of the Ethereum (ETH) design.

Ethereum Pectra upgrade to replace AA and changes game in staking

Ethereum (ETH) developers agreed about at least five of Ethereum Improvement Proposals or EIPs that will be included in the Pectra upgrade. The list was shared by Anthony Sassano, independent Ethereum (ETH) researcher and educationist.

EIP-7702 is set to replace Ethereum's (ETH) current Account Abstraction mechanism, ERC 4337. It will advance the way Ethereum (ETH) accounts are performing activity of smart contracts.

EIP-7594 "Peer Data Availability Sampling" will upgrade the scaling opportunities of Ethereum's L2 rollups. EIP-7251 "MaxEB" will raise the limit of stake in Ethereum (ETH) PoS and introduce triggerable exits for its participants.

EIP-2537 is set to add functionality to efficiently perform operations over the BLS12-381 curve, including those for BLS signature verification, as per EF main GitHub repository.

Last but not least, EIP-7549 will make consensus voting procedures more efficient by reducing the average number of pairings needed to verify consensus rules.

Pectra hard fork expected to be activated in Q1, 2025

Sassano added that right now the history expiry function is being considered for inclusion in the next hard fork. Meanwhile, hotly anticipated Verkle Trees will likely be added in Osaka, the first post-Pectra hard fork.

The Ethereum (ETH) veteran concluded that his particular estimation for the Pectra activation date is Q1, 2025, while in some sources, community enthusiasts also discuss Q4, 2024, as a potential timeline.

As covered by U.Today previously, Prague-Electra upgrade specifications were introduced to the community in January 2024.