[NEWS] Ethereum's major upgrade "Pectra" to be implemented as early as March

On the 16th, Ethereum (ETH) core developers agreed to aim for the next major upgrade, "Pectra," to be implemented in March of this year. According to highlights from the developer meeting, the upgrade will be verified on the testnet in February, and if there are no problems, it will be implemented on the mainnet in early to mid-March.

The developers will also decide on the block number for running Pectra on the testnets Sepolia and Holesky by the end of this month. At this time, it is expected to be implemented on February 12th on Sepolia and on February 19th on Holesky.

Since Pectra will be a larger-scale upgrade than previous upgrades, it was agreed at a past developer meeting that it would be carried out in two stages. However, if there are no problems in the verification on the testnet, it may be completed in one go.

With the implementation of Pectra, Ethereum is expected to improve the user experience of wallets and change the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) called EOF (EVM Object Format).

In particular, the amount that validators can stake at one time will be changed from the current 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. Until now, even if you held more than 32 ETH, you had to set up a separate node, which took time to activate. By raising the upper limit of the stake amount, the number of validators will decrease, which is expected to reduce messages on the network. It will also reduce the burden on validators who manage multiple nodes.

Ethereum's major upgrade is attracting attention from institutional investors, and its progress may affect the price.

Currently, there is a noticeable inflow of funds into Bitcoin (BTC), XRP, etc. ahead of Trump's inauguration as US president. On the other hand, once the market movement has run its course, it is possible that funds will also be directed to Ethereum ahead of the upgrade.

Reference: Developer Conference Highlights
Image: Shutterstock

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