Pectra Upgrade Issues on Ethereum's Holesky Testnet

At 04:55 AM on February 25, 2025 (Vietnam time), Ethereum deployed the Pectra upgrade on the Holesky testnet as planned.

However, after the upgrade, Holesky encountered a problem that could not finalize transactions as expected. The network participation rate dropped to about 50%, and the cause of this problem is currently being actively investigated by Ethereum developers.

Pectra is an important upgrade of Ethereum, following the Dencun upgrade in March 2024. This upgrade integrates 11 improvement proposals (EIPs) to improve performance and user experience.

Notably, EIP-7702 improves the crypto wallet experience by adding smart contract functionality, promoting account abstraction, making the wallet smoother to use. EIP-7251 increases the maximum staking limit for validators from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, helping to consolidate ETH stakes and reduce the complexity of operating multiple validators, thereby optimizing staking operations on Ethereum.

The Sepolia testnet is scheduled to launch Pectra testing on March 5. However, this schedule may be delayed depending on the severity of the Holesky incident.

After completing testing on both testnets, Ethereum developers expect to deploy Pectra on mainnet in March 2025.

Previously, Ethereum also encountered a similar issue when upgrading Dencun on the Goerli testnet in January 2024.

Testing on testnets helps detect and fix issues before official deployment, ensuring the stability and security of the Ethereum network.