Ethereum Developers Begin Holesky Pectra Testing

The Holesky testnet will get the Pectra update today at 9:55 pm UTC. The update will let developers test the new features before they go live on the Ethereum mainnet.

At 7:29 a.m. UTC on March 5, the Ethereum Foundation said Pectra would go live on Holesky at epoch 115,968 and then on Sepolia at epoch 222,464. The group said that an activation epoch for the mainnet will be chosen once both testnets have successfully upgraded to Pectra.

Pectra adds capabilities to Ethereum accounts that support layer-2 scaling and enhance user experience for validators.

Following the Dencun upgrade of the network, the Pectra fork lowers transaction costs for layer-2 networks and boosts the Ethereum roll-through economy. Perceived as a major step toward mass acceptance, the Dencun hard fork rolled out on March 13, 2024.

Pectra Upgrade For Holesky Testnet

Pectra marks a significant step toward account abstraction, claims the Ethereum Foundation.

EIP-3074 is one of the main developments since it lets externally owned accounts (EOAs) run sponsored gas payments and batch transactions, improving Ethereum account abstraction.

Users of gas sponsorship can transact from an account without Ether and alternative authentication, spending limits, and other recovery systems.

Apart from that, the Pectra update will boost Ethereum’s blob capacity by 50%. Currently averaging three blobs per block, the mainnet will boost to six upon Pectra deployment.

Layer-2 blockchains use blobs—ephemeral data storage—to send compressed transaction data and proofs to the mainnet. Blobs hitting Ethereum have made layer-2 transactions considerably less expensive.

Moreover, one Ethereum Improvement Proposal included in Pectra will increase the maximum balance a validator could get. Validators can deposit up to 32 ETH right now. Pectra will let this maximum balance reach 2,048 ETH.

Ethereum Developers Speed Up The Plan

Pectra’s deployment on the testnet reflects Ethereum developers’ decisions to hasten the network’s roadmap.

At an “All Core Devs” meeting on February 13, leaders and developers of ecosystem core systems preferred to implement future protocol improvements at a faster cadence.

Said Nixo Rokish, a protocol support team member of the Ethereum Foundation,

this means “less dilly-dallying about the scope and more aggressively presented opinions.”