Ethereum is about to undergo a major technological upgrade

In the first quarter of 2025, the Ethereum network will undergo a significant upgrade codenamed Prague/Electra, commonly referred to as the Prague upgrade or Pectra upgrade. This upgrade marks another important milestone in the development of Ethereum. Unlike past major upgrades, the Pectra upgrade does not focus on a single goal but encompasses multiple technical improvements and optimizations. Let's delve into the key changes this upgrade will bring.

Upgrade Focus

1. Significantly enhance scalability: By introducing sharding technology and optimizing layer two solutions, the network's processing capacity is greatly improved.

2. Enhance security and stability: Adopt advanced encryption technologies and improve the proof of stake protocol.

3. Improve the development experience: Introduce new programming languages, optimize development tools, and simplify the smart contract deployment process.

4. Optimize user experience: reduce gas fees and provide a more intuitive interactive interface.

5. Enhance Environmental Protection: Further reduce energy consumption to make network operations more green and environmentally friendly.

Major Technical Improvements

Verkle tree and statelessness

Introduce Verkle tree technology to achieve network statelessness. This will greatly reduce the computational burden on validating nodes, eliminating the need to locally store the complete network state.

lightweight verification client

Develop a validator light client that allows users to validate the network on resource-constrained devices (such as tablets and smartphones) without downloading the entire blockchain data. This initiative will further promote the decentralization process of Ethereum.

Historical Data Optimization

Implementing a data cleaning mechanism to remove historical data from full nodes after a specified time. This not only reduces storage requirements but also enhances the degree of decentralization of the nodes. A core developer stated that this could reduce the amount of data required to run a node from several TB to a level that can be accommodated by a regular computer's memory.

Consensus Layer Improvement

Multiple upgrades aim to improve staking efficiency:

• Simplified validator client software to reduce staking processing latency.
• Enhance network security by controlling the growth rate and scale of the validator set.
• Increase the maximum effective balance of a single validator to optimize network communication efficiency.
• Provide more design options for staking pool developers.
• Improve proof efficiency, reduce network load and bandwidth requirements.

Execution Layer Upgrade

• Enhance the interoperability between the mainnet and the beacon chain, providing more features for decentralized staking pools, dApps, and DAOs.
• Upgrade the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to improve the upgradability and execution efficiency of smart contracts.
• Consider introducing smart account features for regular external account wallets to achieve advanced functionalities such as batch transactions, fee payment, and more.

Impact on Developers and Users

Developer Perspective

• Improved network scalability and reduced gas costs are conducive to building more efficient and economical decentralized applications.
• Improvements to development tools will simplify the creation and deployment process of smart contracts.
• Enhanced security features and stability help in developing more reliable applications.
• More comprehensive documentation and support, as well as a more active ecosystem, will improve the overall development experience.

User Experience

1. The transaction processing speed is accelerated, and network congestion is reduced.
2. The reduction of transaction fees makes Ethereum applications more user-friendly.
3. The wallet interface and token management have become more intuitive and user-friendly.
4. The environmental sustainability of the network is enhanced, attracting more users who focus on sustainable development.

Looking to the Future

The Pectra upgrade will drive the Ethereum network to new heights by addressing scalability challenges, enhancing security and stability, and introducing developer-friendly features. This upgrade not only solidifies Ethereum's position as a leading platform in the decentralized ecosystem but also lays the groundwork for future innovations and expanded use cases. With continuous technological advancements, Ethereum is expected to reshape the way people interact with blockchain technology, creating more possibilities for developers, users, and the entire community.