Ethereum Developers Confirm Plan to Split 'Pectra' Upgrade In Two #UpgradeNow
The decision to split up the upgrade wasn't unexpected. Developers had discussed that Pectra was becoming too ambitious to ship all at once, floating the idea of splitting it up to minimize the risk of finding bugs in the code.
Ethereum developers agreed on Thursday to split their upcoming hard fork, Pectra, into two packages, in a move to make the massive upgrade less unwieldy and reduce the risk of missteps or bugs.
The decision to split up the upgrade wasn't unexpected. Developers had discussed previously that Pectra was becoming too ambitious to ship all at once, floating the idea of splitting it up in order to minimize the risk of finding bugs in the code.
Pectra was on track to be Ethereumâs biggest hard fork to date. (A hard fork is the technical term for when a blockchain splits from its original, and is the method used by Ethereum to implement major software upgrades.) Now, developers will be able to focus on a much narrower scope. Previously, developers shared they would aim to have the upgrade live in early 2025; that is still the case for the first part of the Pectra package.
The core developers decided that eight Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs) will be included in the first package, which includes EIP-7702, aimed at improving the user-experience of wallets, and famously scribbled by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 22 minutes.
The second package is up to be changed over the next few months, but as of now could include proposals that aim to make changes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, known as EOF, along with introducing a feature called PeerDAS, which improves data availability sampling and ultimately is beneficial for layer-2 blockchains.
The developers acknowledged that the scopes of these upgrades can change over time, so solidifying this upgrade wouldn't be wise in this moment.
