Ethereum's Pectra upgrade tests begin on Holesky testnet

Ethereum's (CRYPTO:ETH) Pectra upgrade has officially launched on the Holesky testnet, commencing at 9:55 pm UTC, paving the way for developers to evaluate its new features before implementation on the Ethereum mainnet.

The Ethereum Foundation announced that Pectra will subsequently launch on the Sepolia testnet on March 5 at 7:29 am UTC.

Following successful upgrades on both testnets, a mainnet activation epoch will be determined.

Pectra introduces improvements to Ethereum accounts, supports layer-2 scaling, and enhances the user experience for validators.

This upgrade follows the Dencun hard fork, which significantly reduced transaction fees for layer-2 networks and improved the economics of Ethereum rollups.

One major change included in Pectra is EIP-3074, which enhances Ethereum account abstraction, allowing externally owned accounts (EOAs) to execute batch transactions and sponsored gas payments.

Gas sponsorship enables users to transact without Ether and allows for alternative authentication, spending controls, and other recovery mechanisms.

The Pectra upgrade will increase Ethereum's blob capacity by 50%, raising the average number of blobs per block from three to six.

These blobs provide ephemeral data storage utilised by layer-2 blockchains to submit compressed transaction data and proofs to the mainnet, contributing to significantly cheaper layer-2 transactions.

Furthermore, Pectra will raise the maximum balance on which a validator can receive rewards, extending the current limit of 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH.

The upgrade combines features from both the Prague and Electra upgrades, enhancing scalability, usability, and staking efficiency.

The deployment of Pectra on the testnet follows decisions from Ethereum developers to accelerate the network's roadmap.

On February 13, ecosystem core developers and leaders favored deploying future protocol upgrades at a faster cadence.

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

The target release date for Pectra is March 2025.

At the time of reporting, the Ethereum (ETH) price was $2,504.20.