One of the major updates of Ethereum, Pectra upgrade will make changes to gas fees, validator rights, etc.

BlockBeats news, September 21, this week, Ethereum's core developers decided to split the network's next major upgrade, Pectra, into at least two parts, with the first update to be released around February 2025.

Currently, regardless of what token is transferred, gas fees on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and other second-layer networks must be paid in ETH. A proposal included in the first part of Pectra, EIP-7702, will effectively end this requirement, allowing users to pay gas fees with other more widely used cryptocurrencies.

Another improvement is EIP-7251, which will allow Ethereum stakers to receive rewards for more than 32 ETH staked. For example, users who currently stake 40 ETH cannot currently earn income or gain voting rights from an additional 8 ETH. This will greatly reduce the bandwidth requirements of the entire Ethereum network.

Two other proposals included in the initial version of Pectra, EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, will also enable fully automated and permissionless ETH staking pools for the first time. The rest of Pectra may have to wait until 2026.