Author: Macauley Peterson, Blockworks; Translated by: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

It’s unclear when Ethereum’s next major upgrade will hit mainnet, with current estimates ranging from November this year to early 2025 — though the latter now seems more likely.

The first step in supporting the “Pectra” timeline is to finalize the specifications for all ethereum improvement proposals to be included.

While much of the work has been completed, Thursday’s meeting of core developers (ACD) identified a piece called “Pectra’s top unresolved specification issue,” EIP-7702: Setting the EOA account code for a transaction.

The proposal allows an externally owned account (EOA) — think a regular wallet like MetaMask — to temporarily act as a smart contract for a single transaction. An EOA is an account controlled by a private key, while a smart contract is code that runs on a blockchain (in this case, Ethereum).

EIP-7702 aims to merge some features of both to enhance flexibility and security.

One example is gas-free transactions, where a dapp sets an EOA to allow a third party (such as an operator or sponsor) to pay for the transaction.

The EIP was proposed by Ethereum developers including Vitalik Buterin in early May and is intended to replace a previous controversial attempt to enable similar functionality.

This upgrade was designed with a future based on account abstraction in mind, avoiding unnecessary complexity and ensuring a further improved user experience.

During the ACD call, developers discussed the integration challenges and potential risks associated with EIP-7702.

Sudeep Kumar of the Erigon team suggested an account-based revocation system that would “keep track of the template addresses that [users] revoke.”

Geth developer Lightclient suggested that such functionality could be implemented as an ERC rather than in the protocol.

Other developers have expressed concerns about the complexity of EIP-7702 and the potential for scope creep, depending on which version is ultimately adopted. Some developers have advocated for bringing in some of the functionality from the earlier EIP-3704 that was supposed to replace it.

But Safe co-founder Richard Meissner praised 7702’s simplicity, noting that it “has no on-chain impact, [so] you can deprecate it more easily.”

Marius van der Wijden from Geth expressed reservations about encouraging the use of one account as both a Smart Account and an EOA, and Meissner agreed.

“In specifying it, it feels very dangerous to have it be both,” Meissner said.

The consensus reached at the meeting was to resolve these issues through the next ACD call to ensure timely implementation of Devnet 2 (the third of many small developer testnets).

The call was scheduled for July 4 (Independence Day), but all of the U.S. developers in attendance said nothing would stand in the way of Ethereum’s progress.