Ethereum developers have set May 7 as the mainnet launch date for the Pectra upgrade, marking a major milestone since the Dencun update in March 2024.
During the "Consensus Layer Meeting 154" held on the evening of April 3, 2025, the Ethereum team set May 7, 2025, as the official mainnet launch date for Pectra—the biggest upgrade since Dencun in 2024. The announcement followed a successful, error-free test of Pectra on the Hoodi testnet.
The need for the Hoodi testnet arose because, according to the original timeline, Pectra was supposed to launch on two Ethereum testnets—Holesky in late February and Sepolia in early March—before going live on mainnet later this month. However, testing on Holesky did not go smoothly, as the testnet failed to finalize transactions for several days. Things didn't improve on Sepolia either, forcing the Ethereum team to pause all upgrade-related activities last week to investigate the issues.
Fortunately, the third round of testing on Hoodi went smoothly, clearing the path for the official mainnet deployment.
As previously explained by Coin68, Pectra is one of two major upgrades developed by the Ethereum team since Dencun in 2024. It includes 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), primarily focused on enhancing staking, user wallets, and network performance. Key highlights include:
Pectra – Part 1 (First half of 2025):
This phase introduces upgrades such as EIP-7251 (raising the staking limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH) and EIP-7702 (an evolution of EIP-3074 aimed at improving the user wallet experience). It also streamlines the request time for validator deposits and withdrawals.
Fusaka – Part 2 (Expected in 2026):
This phase is set to integrate major technical improvements like EVM Object Format (EOF) and PeerDAS, enhancing both network performance and security.
In addition, Pectra brings a range of other optimization-focused EIPs to improve transaction processing time and bolster Ethereum’s network security, including: EIP-7691, EIP-7623, EIP-7840, EIP-6110, EIP-7685, EIP-2537, EIP-2935, and EIP-7549.
The Pectra upgrade is expected to give Ethereum a "revival," similar to what was seen with Dencun in 2024 and The Merge in 2022 — potentially allowing the protocol’s token, ETH, to return to the value levels anticipated by the community.
At present, ETH is trading around $1,785, reflecting a 6.3% drop over the past 24 hours and a 13% decline over the past month, largely impacted by tariff-related news from the Trump administration.
