Ethereum Pectra Upgrade Nears Mainnet Launch After Final Test

Ethereum developers are working hard to get the Pectra upgrade ready for launch, but things haven’t gone smoothly. The upgrade was first tested on the Holesky testnet on February 24, but it failed to finalize. 

Developers weren’t expecting this, so they had to dig in and figure out what went wrong. They tried again on the Sepolia testnet on March 5, but things got even messier. An unknown attacker found a weak spot and started mining empty blocks, making things worse.

With these failures, developers needed a fresh start. They launched a new testnet called Hoodi on March 17 to make sure everything works before the mainnet launch. Pectra was rolled out on Hoodi on March 26, and if everything goes well, the upgrade could go live on April 25 after a 30-day monitoring period. This is the last big test before Ethereum’s next big change.

Ethereum Foundation protocol support team member Nixo Rokish said that the developers are feeling the pressure. “I think the consensus layer devs especially, but also somewhat the execution layer devs are exhausted right now,” Rokish said. Having two testnets fail in a row was tough, and fixing unexpected problems took a lot of work.

Pectra has a key feature that lets people pay transaction fees using cryptocurrencies other than Ether (ETH). This means users won’t always need ETH in their wallets just to make transactions. It’s part of a bigger effort to make Ethereum more user-friendly and easier for developers to build on.

Testnets like Hoodi are super important. They let developers test new features in a low-risk environment, so any problems can be fixed before launching on the mainnet.

Even with all these challenges, Ethereum is still making progress. On March 13, the network rolled out the Dencun upgrade, which helped cut gas fees by 95%. In fact, on March 23, average gas fees hit a record low of 0.28 gwei. If Pectra passes this final test, it will be Ethereum’s biggest upgrade in over a year.