ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, the Ethereum mainnet successfully activated the Pectra upgrade at 6:05 AM Eastern Time, marking the most significant network update since the Merge in 2022.This hard fork includes 11 EIP improvement proposals, primarily focusing on three major areas: enhancing staking efficiency, optimizing user experience, and improving Layer2 scalability. The successful deployment of the testnet Hoodi in March laid the foundation for this upgrade. Pectra sets the stage for the Fusaka upgrade, which will introduce key technologies such as Verkle Trees and PeerDAS.Among the highlights of this upgrade is the EIP-7702 account abstraction scheme, which allows regular wallets to temporarily execute smart contract functions. In the future, users will be able to experience innovative features such as third-party payment of Gas fees, batch transaction packaging, and even recovery of lost private keys through social contacts. In terms of the staking mechanism, the ETH staking limit for a single validator node has been significantly increased from 32 to 2048, allowing institutional stakers to reduce operational complexity through node merging.For Layer2 scalability, the Blob data capacity per block has doubled to 6 (peaking at 9), and the proto-danksharding technology based on last year's Dencun upgrade continues to deepen, which is expected to reduce transaction costs on Rollup chains like Arbitrum by over 90%. The technical team has also addressed several long-standing pain points: the activation time for validator nodes has been reduced from 12 hours to 13 minutes, the execution layer can directly control node exits to enhance key security, and the on-chain storage of historical block hash data has improved the reliability of decentralized oracles.

ChainCatcher news, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko posted on X that it has been decided to remove EOF (EVM Object Format) from the upcoming Fusaka upgrade. The main reasons include: the tight timeline for the Fusaka upgrade, the development team's consensus that PeerDAS should be prioritized; the technical uncertainties that EOF may bring; and the community feedback not being effectively incorporated into the decision-making process. EOF aims to optimize the EVM bytecode structure, enhancing security and performance, and was originally planned to include about 15 EIP contents.

ChainCatcher news, former Galaxy Digital research vice president Christine Kim posted on the X platform that Ethereum developers are considering removing EOF (Ethereum Object Format) from the Fusaka upgrade. However, unlike before, Kim believes they might actually take action this time.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Ethereum core developers are considering raising the Gas limit to 150 million in the Fusaka hard fork, which is four times the current limit. This proposal has been put forward through EIP-9678, and developers believe it will significantly expand the execution capacity of Ethereum Layer 1.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum developers @linoscope and @JustinDrake jointly proposed the EIP-7917 proposal, aimed at restructuring the validator election process through a deterministic proposer preview mechanism. The core innovations of this proposal include: precomputing a deterministic proposer sequence at the beginning of the epoch; eliminating the prediction bias caused by the existing RANDAO randomness + effective balance weighting mechanism; and maintaining full compatibility with existing infrastructure.Under the current design, the dynamic changes in validators' effective balances can lead to an inability to accurately predict future epoch proposers, posing risks to pre-confirmation protocols such as MEV-boost. It is estimated that the new scheme can enhance the security margin of on-chain applications like oracles by 40%.

ChainCatcher news, reported by The Block, states that Ethereum core developers plan to terminate support for the Holesky testnet in September 2025 and are preparing for its role transition and eventual deprecation.Deprecating testnets is a common practice; Ethereum developers previously discontinued Kiln, Ropsten, and Rinkeby in 2022, and stopped Goerli last year. Holesky was launched in September 2023 and is one of Ethereum's two main testnets, the other being Sepolia. It has been a key public testnet for staking, infrastructure, and protocol development.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum developer eric.eth stated that the common wallet user experience will completely disappear in just a few years. Users will no longer need to click "connect" and "sign." Users will need to converse with agents, who will handle all on-chain tasks for them.

ChainCatcher news, two well-known Ethereum developers eric.eth and sassal.eth stated on X that the address that deposited 30,098 ETH into Maker this morning is not the Ethereum Foundation address.Previously, Arkham marked the address suspected to be the Ethereum Foundation, which deposited 30,098 ETH into the Maker vault at 04:15 (UTC+8) today. Currently, this address holds a total of 100,394.447 ETH as collateral and has a debt position of 78,035,224.7182 DAI, with a liquidation price of $1,127.065.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinTelegraph, Ethereum core developers reached a consensus on accelerating the deployment of future protocol upgrades during the "All Core Devs" meeting on February 13. Nixo Rokish, a member of the Ethereum Foundation's protocol support team, stated that the Pectra review report shows strong community support for speeding up the fork pace, which means reducing delays in the scope of upgrades and more actively soliciting feedback.The Pectra upgrade, scheduled for release in April, will be the largest upgrade in Ethereum's history, containing up to 20 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), involving enhancements to cryptocurrency wallet functionality and data availability expansion. Ethereum Foundation researcher Tim Beiko stated that the Pectra system contracts will go live on the mainnet on February 17.The development team has also set a deadline of April 10 for the Fusaka upgrade, which primarily focuses on improving the transaction packaging process. Developers must submit EIP proposals by March 13, and the community needs to express opinions on the inclusion of proposals by March 27.

ChainCatcher news, Ethereum developers stated in the 204th Core Developer Execution Layer meeting (ACDE) that due to a new consensus bug in Pectra Devnet 5 affecting the Nethermind client, the developers decided to postpone the determination of the specific upgrade time for the public testnet.The Nethermind team stated that the bug caused by BLS precompile optimization has been fixed and will not affect the launch of Devnet 6. Developers plan to revisit the testnet upgrade timing in next week's ACD meeting. Additionally, the meeting discussed a security vulnerability affecting the Geth client, which could impact Ethereum's peer-to-peer layer and Layer-2 scaling solutions. Nodes running Geth version 1.14 and above need to update to the latest version immediately.The Pectra upgrade schedule is as follows:Week of February 3: Launch Devnet 6;February 6 (Thursday): Next ACD meeting to decide on the upgrade timing for Holesky and Sepolia testnets;February 10-11 (Monday or Tuesday): Official announcement of the testnet upgrade;Around February 19: Holesky testnet upgrade;February 20: Developer meeting to decide on Ethereum mainnet upgrade timing;Around February 26: Sepolia testnet upgrade (planned about a week after Holesky upgrade);February 27-28: Release final version of mainnet upgrade;Mid-March: Ethereum mainnet upgrade.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Jesse Pollak, head of the Base protocol, recently stated in a conference call with Ethereum founders and developers that based rollups are "a flexible and powerful tool that will allow us to use them for Base, bringing it closer to Ethereum and increasing the security guarantees it provides."Ben Jones, a director at the Optimism Foundation, added that based rollups will improve collaboration between the Ethereum base layer and L2.Ethereum L2 networks (such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base) have charged hefty fees by deploying high-speed, centralized sorters (i.e., the order of transaction processing and addition to blockchain blocks), but this comes at the cost of unification.Based rollups, proposed by Ethereum core developer Justin Drake in March 2023, return this process to the base layer, improving the decentralization of the network, as the block building process will be executed by all Ethereum validators rather than a single centralized sorter.At the same time, native rollups will enhance the way transactions are executed on the base layer, making the network more composable.However, these L2s will forfeit a significant portion of their revenue gained through maximum extractable value. Data from Dune Analytics shows that Arbitrum, which supports the transition to based rollups, has generated $210 million in revenue from its centralized sorter, while Base's revenue stands at $96.2 million.It is worth noting that based rollups or native rollups may bring more revenue to Ethereum's base layer and positively impact the price of ETH. However, the decentralized sorting of the Ethereum base layer means that transactions will be confirmed within 12 seconds, rather than the approximately 1 second typical of many Ethereum L2s. Several Ethereum L2 leaders also support the deployment of "FABRIC," an infrastructure that supports based rollups.Daniel Wang, CEO of Ethereum L2 Taiko, stated that the protocol is willing to adopt the FABRIC standard to "address" Ethereum's interoperability issues, saying, "We have been waiting for the FABRIC standard so that we can work together and provide a complete solution."

ChainCatcher news, reported by Bitcoin.com, indicates that concerns are growing within the Ethereum ecosystem about its pace of development.Jesse Pollak, head of Base (the second-layer network of Bitcoin), criticized Ethereum's current roadmap, stating that it is too conservative and calling for the originally scheduled updates in 2027 to be moved up to early 2026.Ethereum Foundation developer Dankrad Feist shares a similar view, stating that the current growth plan "lacks ambition" and pointing out issues with the existing upgrade process. Feist also questions the notion that scalability can only be achieved on second-layer networks, emphasizing that large-scale scalability of the Ethereum base layer is feasible.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum early developer Eric Conner posted on x, stating that as Vitalik gradually steps back, the opacity of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the sense of disconnection from the community are becoming stronger. He pointed out that EF currently exhibits a "defeatist and competitive mindset," which has led many community members to question whether to continue staying.Eric stated that leadership, culture, and community are important, but currently, EF tends to focus more on "goodwill" and emotional issues rather than understanding the community's demands for change. As an early participant in the Ethereum ecosystem and one of the founders of Ethhub, Eric mentioned that he may have lost his passion for Ethereum, but still hopes for its success.

ChainCatcher news, reported by The Block, Ethereum developers plan to launch the Pectra upgrade for the network in March 2025, setting specific milestones before the mainnet fork.According to a core developer conference call held on Thursday, after coordinating with client software teams, a new client upgrade and hard fork for the Ethereum test networks Sepolia and Holesky is expected to be released in February. If the fork on the test networks goes as planned, the mainnet will launch next month.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum developer Eric.eth tweeted: "Ethereum still needs great leaders, especially in the ever-changing landscape of cryptocurrency competition. It is still too early to implement subtraction and opaque leadership methods.I would prefer Vitalik to remain the leader of Ethereum rather than slowly stepping back over the years; it was his early leadership that brought us to where we are today.I strongly oppose the notion that 'Ethereum does not need the Ethereum Foundation or leaders.' This is not only because seeking leadership is a human instinct, but also because this technology is still in a very early stage, making such an approach unsuitable. The chain can be decentralized, but that does not mean that leadership should also be decentralized."

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum developer Ryan Berckmans commented on Max Resnick's job change: "I am glad to see Max Resnick leave the Ethereum scaling core development community.Critics like Resnick often claim that Ethereum needs to become more like Solana. But in reality, Ethereum has reached its peak through the L2 expansion strategy—there's no need to change the strategy. Solana is trying to acquire what Ethereum already has, including client diversity, true protocol specifications, research communities, and more on-chain capital. What is actually happening now is that Solana is taking significant steps to try to become more like Ethereum.Resnick is now part of Solana's efforts to become more like Ethereum, which is ironic considering he has always said that Ethereum must become more like Solana. However, all the funding in the world cannot buy them decentralization. In short, Solana is essentially a financially strong paper tiger. It’s no surprise that this suits Resnick very well."Previous news, Ethereum ecosystem developer Max Resnick announced that he has left his job at Consensys to join the Solana research company Anza.

ChainCatcher news, Ethereum ecosystem developer Max Resnick announced that he has left his job at Consensys to join Solana development company Anza.Resnick plans to write specifications for the Solana protocol as much as possible in the initial 100 days, prioritizing the fee markets and consensus implementations that he believes will have the greatest impact.Resnick stated that he will continue to collaborate with the Consensys team as a research advisor while focusing on his new role.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum protocol developer and Prysm maintainer Terence posted on the X platform that the Ethereum core developers meeting (AllCoreDevs) has reached a preliminary consensus to increase the blob target/max from 3/6 to 6/9, with specific implementation requiring further testing and results from the development network.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum developer Paul Berg has released a proposal regarding multiple native tokens on Ethereum, aimed at improving the user experience when transferring tokens, making native financial products easier to deploy, and enhancing the innovative potential of Ethereum L2 applications.The proposal is named EIP-7809, which suggests adding a backward-compatible extension to the EVM that, if approved through Ethereum's new proposal process, will allow fungible tokens to operate with "native-like" properties.ETH has been operating as Ethereum's native token, and almost all other Ethereum-based tokens are built on top of this network but do not possess most of the same "native" characteristics as ETH. This limits functionalities such as direct token transfers using opcodes and transferring multiple tokens in a single contract call. EIP-7809 introduces four new opcodes:MINT & BURN, allowing for token supply management through minting and burning tokens;BALANCEOF for checking token balances;NTCALL for token transfers that require contract calls;NTCREATE for creating contracts that include upfront token deposits.