After months of rigorous internal stress testing of developer and testnets, Ethereum (ETH) developers agreed to move towards implementing Pectra on the mainnet in March. It is the largest upgrade in the history of Ethereum (ETH) since the move to proof-of-stake, and is expected to make Pectra make Ethereum (ETH) significantly faster and cheaper.

The Ethereum (ETH) Pectra mainnet is scheduled to go live in March

The inaugural phase of the Ethereum (ETH) Pectra upgrade will be live on the mainnet by mid-March 2025. This decision was made yesterday, January 16, 2025, at the Ethereum All Execution Developer Meeting #203, says Christine Kim, a researcher at Galaxy Digital.

On February 12, 2025, the Ethereum testnet, Cipolia, will go live, followed by Holsky one week later. The developers also agreed to replace the next devnet with a "shadow fork" on Sepolia or Holesky.

Kim stressed that such a timeline may be adjusted again and should be considered a "positive scenario" for testnet and mainnet deployments:

Keep in mind that the above is a tentative and optimistic timeline for activating bacteria on testnets and the mainnet.

Previously, the Ethereum Prague-Electra (Pectra) upgrade was expected to begin in December 2024. It is safe to say that it will take a year and a half to fully deploy.

The inaugural phase of Pectra activation will occur in 2025, while the next upgrades will be rolled out in early 2026, according to developer estimates.

Smart wallets, ETH's new storage frontier, and unparalleled TPS: why Pectra is big

As previously covered by U.Today, Ethereum Pectra is one of the most ambitious hard forks in the entire history of cryptocurrency. Most importantly, it will blur the line between on-chain accounts and smart contracts, paving the way for previously unimaginable DeFi designs.

The Ether signing mechanism in a Proof of Stake (PoS) contract is also set to be revisited. Users will be able to stake up to 2,048 ETH compared to today's limit of 32 ETH.

Also, as blob space increases (a blob is a specific data structure in Ethereum), some EVM L2 networks, including the likes of Starknet and Fuel, may reach 1,600 transactions per second speed.

EIP 7702, the most discussed update on Pectra's agenda, will make the blockchain more cost-optimized due to batch transactions.

Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $3,430, up 5% in the last 24 hours.