Ethereum Developers Deploy Pectra Update on Sepolia Testnet

On March 5th, the Ethereum team activated the Pectra hard fork on the Sepolia test network.

Sepolia has successfully upgraded to Pectra ?

(Hope I don’t jinx it this time) pic.twitter.com/pPtufWbHh2

— terence (@terencechain) March 5, 2025

Sepolia serves as the final major test before the planned mainnet update launch in the first half of April. The final date will be determined during the All Core Developers conference on March 6th.

Developers simulated a load in the testnet close to the main network’s parameters.

The activation of Pectra in Sepolia follows similar actions in Holesky on February 24th, which at one point led to a slot finalization failure “due to a configuration issue on three main clients.” Specialists released a software update.

Despite the bugs discovered, the team did not postpone the deployment of the update in Sepolia.

Pectra is formed from the names of two previously planned updates, Prague (for the execution layer) and Electra (for the consensus layer).

EIPs include improvements in account abstraction, make significant changes to validator operations, and aim to enhance overall network performance.

Previously, the security team launched a bounty program for stress testing the hard fork until March 24th, with a prize pool of $2 million.

Ethereum faces “intense competition” from rival blockchain projects like Solana, according to JPMorgan analysts.

In February, developers noted the feasibility of reducing the frequency of network update activations from one year to six months.