Ethereum targets March mainnet activation for Pectra

During the first ACDE call of 2025, Ethereum developers slated activation of the Pectra upgrade on mainnet for early to mid-March.

The sizeable upgrade implements a broad slate of EIPs. The proposals include improvements to account abstraction, changes to validator operations, gas fee optimisation and higher network performance.

The maximum validator stake is expected to rise from 32 to 2,048 ETH.

About half an hour before the meeting, engineers launched a fifth devnet to test the planned changes. Since November, the temporary Mekong testnet has been used for the same purpose.

Core developer Tim Beiko set out a schedule for further testing on the main testnets:

• by end-January the team will determine fork blocks;
• client releases by 3 February;
• 12 February: the upgrade on Sepolia;
• 19 February — on Holesky.

To streamline the process, developers chose not to create new temporary setups for testing code changes. Instead, they will use shadow forks of the main testnets.

Frederic Servantes, a protocol security researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said a third-party audit of Pectra’s system contracts has concluded. No serious issues were identified, he noted.

In May 2024, developers decided they would complete preparation of the upgrade on mainnet by the first quarter of 2025. In September, they discussed splitting the upgrade into two phases to accelerate its rollout.