Ethereum’s (ETH) mega-upgrade Prague-Electra, or Pectra, will debut on Holesky testnet Feb. 24, while Sepolia activation is set to happen in early March. Stress-tests on both testnets will help developers decide on the exact timing for mainnet activation of Pectra.
Ethereum Pectra date confirmed by Tim Beiko: Activation starts in 10 days
Ethereum Foundation’s Tim Beiko shared the timeline of testnet activation of Pectra, a mega-upgrade to Ethereum’s tech design. According to his thread on X, Pectra will go live on Holesky Feb. 24, 2025, while its Sepolia debut is set to happen March 5.
Pectra is coming to Ethereum testnets 🌃
On Feb 24th, at epoch 115968, the upgrade will go live on Holesky. Then, on Mar 5, at epoch 222464, it will activate on Sepolia.
Assuming both of these go smoothly, we’ll then pick an epoch for mainnet activation. More info below 👇 pic.twitter.com/1o9iFbYVaR
— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) February 14, 2025
Thus, the first phase of Pectra is expected to land on Holesky testnet at epoch 115968 and on Sepolia testnet at epoch 222464. Once the procedures of testing are finished, the epoch for mainnet activation of Pectra will be selected, Beiko adds.
He stressed that all operators of Holesky or Sepolia testnet nodes are invited to proceed to updating their software clients before the testnet hard forks happen:
Again, the testnet forks are scheduled for Feb 24th and March 5th. If you’re running a node on either Holesky or Sepolia, now’s the time to update it. Note that the same client releases will work for both testnet forks
At the same time, no data is required from regular testnet users at this point.
Also, Beiko recalled that security researchers can still challenge the design of the upgrade and take part in Cantina’s competition for hackers with a $2 million bounty from Ethereum Foundation.
Pectra set to be most ambitious Ethereum (ETH) upgrade post-Merge
As covered by U.Today in its detailed guide, Ethereum Pectra is arguably the largest upgrade in the history of the second largest blockchain.
Beiko explained that all changes in Pectra’s agenda can be distilled to three most important areas, namely augmenting Ethereum (ETH) accounts, improving validator experience and scaling the blob space. With Pectra going live, Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) will blur the line between smart contracts and on-chain wallets on Ethereum (ETH).
Ethereum (ETH) validators will no longer have to wait for delays between execution and consensus layers, enjoying increased maximum effective staking balance.
Also, a 50% increase of blob space will make data logistics on Ethereum (ETH) more resource-effective than ever before.
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