Ethereum Developers Delay Pectra Upgrade Mainnet Launch

Ethereum developers agreed to postpone the highly anticipated launch of the Pectra network upgrade on mainnet until after tests on the Hoodi testnet are complete during the Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call (ACDC) #153 held on March 20.

According to the summary of the call, Ethereum developers will choose a new date for mainnet launch of the Pectra upgrade once the upgrade goes live on Hoodi and they are satisfied with the tests. The new mainnet launch date will be at least thirty days after the Hoodi fork, which is scheduled for Mar. 26.

Pectra was initially supposed to launch in April after all the forks on Ethereum testnets were complete.

In the meantime, Ethereum developers will continue testing Pectra features across various testnets, such as Holesky and Sepholia. Some scheduled tests include attestation packing, slashing inclusion in blocks, failure cases for system contract calls, and parsing deposit contract data.

Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade will implement several improvements to the network, such as account abstraction and Layer 2 scalability.

Pectra aside, Ethereum developers also discussed the timeline for Fusaka, the next Ethereum network upgrade. They agreed on several key deadlines, such as the deadline for Ethereum Improvement Proposals (March 24), the deadline for client teams to share their preferences about the scope and which EIPs not to include (March 31), and the deadline for the Fusaka scope (April 10).