Ethereum Reveals Next Upgrade Post-Dencun, Named Pectra
Ethereum developers have begun planning for a major upgrade following Dencun, called Pectra.
Ethereum Reveals Next Upgrade Post-Dencun. Image: Unchained Crypto
During their regular meeting on January 5th, Ethereum (ETH) developers finalized the schedule to roll out Dencun on testnets and discussed the changes expected in the subsequent upgrade named Pectra.
As explained by Coin68, Ethereum is in the final stages of preparing to deploy Dencun, a significant upgrade for the world's second-largest cryptocurrency network. The most notable adjustment in Dencun will be EIP-4844, designed to reduce transaction fees for layer-2, thereby further enhancing Ethereum's scalability.
However, the preparation process for Dencun faced several hurdles, delaying its deployment originally planned for 2023. The Ethereum development team has decided to postpone the hard fork to around February or March if no additional issues arise during testing on the Goerli, Sepolia, and Holesky testnets scheduled for January 17th, January 31st, and February 7th respectively.
Following this, Ethereum developers moved on to discuss the next upgrade after Dencun, named Prague/Electra, abbreviated as Pectra - akin to how Cancun/Deneb is known as Dencun.
Currently, the Ethereum team is debating the specifics of Pectra, with two main proposals:
- Pectra should focus solely on the introduction of the Verkle Tree feature.
- Pectra should continue implementing EIPs aimed at improving Ethereum.
Verkle Tree is a new data structure, more complex than the Merkle Tree commonly used by many blockchains. Verkle Tree promises to handle more data while consuming less memory, thereby significantly increasing Ethereum's scalability.
Verkle Tree itself has been highlighted prominently in Ethereum's development roadmap recently shared by co-founder Vitalik Buterin, part of the phase termed "The Verge."
The sentiment is split on Pectra as to what should be the priority, but it can be distilled into two camps.
— ً (@lightclients) January 4, 2024
1. Make verkle our sole priority until it ships.
2. In parallel, increase work on verkle and ship a smaller feature fork.
However, some developers argue that prioritizing Verkle Tree for Pectra is overly risky due to its technical complexity, potentially extending the development process to 18 months or more. There are opinions suggesting that the scale and workload involved with Verkle Tree could be comparable to or even heavier than The Merge - the upgrade that unified Ethereum's Proof of Work and Proof of Stake mechanisms in September 2022, a process that took up to 2 years to prepare.
As for the second approach for Pectra, continuing to update proposals for Ethereum improvement, developers have listed several potential changes for the upcoming upgrade, notably including:
- Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Object Format (EOF) suite consisting of EIP-3540, EIP-3670, EIP-4200, EIP-4750, and EIP-5450 aimed at upgrading the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
- EIP-7002: Adjustment of ETH staking withdrawal mechanism for validators.
- EIP-7549: Relaxing conditions for consensus on blockchain data verification.
Ethereum developers will continue discussions on the content of the Pectra upgrade in subsequent meetings. Pectra currently does not have a scheduled deployment timeframe.
