Ethereum Pectra Upgrade Officially Launched: Coexistence of Reform and Challenges

Ethereum successfully activated the highly anticipated Pectra upgrade on May 7, marking another important milestone in the network's development since last year's Dencun fork. This upgrade officially took effect at 6:05 AM Eastern Time and completed final confirmation just 10 minutes later.

Pectra has introduced several key changes, among which the most notable is EIP-7702. This proposal redefines the interaction model between external accounts (EOA) and smart contracts, allowing ordinary user wallets to execute contract logic without changing their addresses for the first time. This breakthrough lays the groundwork for building smarter and more flexible user accounts and is viewed as an important step towards achieving comprehensive account abstraction.

This upgrade also involves adjustments to the validator model. EIP-7251 significantly raises the staking limit for each validator from 32 Ether to 2,048 Ether, allowing large stakers to integrate capital more efficiently, thereby optimizing protocol operational efficiency and improving reward distribution mechanisms.

Another important change is EIP-7691, which increases the number of Blobs (a temporary data structure specifically for storing large data) per block from 3 to 6. This adjustment significantly enhances the data processing capacity of Layer 2, while reducing the cost of Rollup transactions.

However, the Pectra upgrade has also brought new challenges. Experts point out that with the implementation of the upgrade, network bandwidth has become a new bottleneck facing Ethereum. In particular, as Blob data blocks need to be propagated in a peer-to-peer network, whether Ethereum can transmit data efficiently and predictably will directly affect its scalability. Experts emphasize that as the scale of Blob data blocks continues to expand, merely increasing average bandwidth is no longer sufficient; reducing the variability of data propagation is equally critical.

Security experts are also concerned about the far-reaching implications that EIP-7702 may bring. This upgrade breaks the long-held assumption that "EOA cannot execute contract code." Therefore, smart contracts that rely on traditional logic such as tx.origin == msg.sender for reentrancy protection or flash loan protection may face new security risks as a result.

Security experts warn that the trust model has undergone a fundamental change. EOA can now execute logic, introducing new risk factors for contracts that did not anticipate this feature. They cited cases observed after a similar upgrade was introduced by a blockchain platform in March of this year, stating that some suspicious transactions exploiting such hypothetical vulnerabilities have been noted.

To this end, experts strongly recommend that developers update their codebases as soon as possible to avoid continuing to treat EOA as a passive account. Instead, industry-standard reentrancy protection measures and stricter logical constraints should be adopted to minimize potential attack risks.

Despite these challenges, the Pectra upgrade is widely regarded as a key step for Ethereum towards its next phase of development. It not only redefines account interaction patterns but also optimizes the staking mechanism and data processing capabilities, laying a solid foundation for the future expansion of Ethereum. As the upgrade is gradually implemented, developers, researchers, and the entire Web3.0 community will work together to tackle new challenges and promote the continuous development and innovation of the Ethereum ecosystem.