Ethereum's next mega upgrade, Pectra, is forecasted to be released in the fourth quarter of 2024, and it is confirmed that EIP-3074 will be included in the upgrade, which will make transactions easier and more cost-effective. Here are the things you need to know.

Highlight:

The next upgrade of Ethereum, named "Pectra,” is likely to go public in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The upgrade to Pectra will include EIP-3074.
EIP-3074 enables smart contract-like functionality to wallets, strengthening the UX of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Assets to be retrieved without private keys are possible in the future with Pectra.

Ethereum's Pectra Upgrade on Q4

After a completion of the Dencun upgrade in the first quarter of 2024 and implementation of EIP-4844 (proto-dank sharding), Ethereum's next mega upgrade, Pectra, is forecasted to be released in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The Pectra upgrade for Ethereum aims to achieve scalability, functionality, and productivity for the validator stakes to overcome the challenges of Ethereum validators of 32 ETH balance limit, which is a cap for validators that rewards earned beyond the 32 ETH cap must be redirected elsewhere to generate any staking yield. The upgrade will neglect these limitations, allowing users to stake large amounts of ETHs securely and decentralized.

According to Tim Beiko, the lead developer at the Ethereum Foundation, posting on X, the teams were in agreement that the EIP-3074 will be included in Pectra.

What Is Ethereum EIP-3074?

EIP-3074 was a proposal submitted four years ago. EIP, stands for Ethereum Improvement Proposals, allows developers, researchers, or community members to propose and discuss improvements, changes, or new features for the Ethereum blockchain. These EIPs involve several technical aspects, such as the EIP number, author, etc.

For the EIP-3074, it introduced two instructions to EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine): AUTH and AUTHCALL. AUTH sets a context variable authorized based on an ECDSA signature, while AUTHCALL sends a call as the authorized account. It allows users to delegate their contract to manage their EOA (Externally Owned Account) rather than embedding these functionalities into the protocol as transaction validity requirements, and provides a smooth and flexible framework for creating innovative transaction schemes for users' EOAs.

The Functions of EIP-3074 in Pectra

EIP-3074 and the Pectra upgrade will have a lot of benefits for the users, as they will overcome the current limitations of the Ethereum ecosystem. The following are some examples.

Batch the transactions: Users are allowed the company to accept a large number of transactions at once by EIP-3074.
Delegated security: With EIP-3074, users can take advantage of sophisticated security models, including multi-signature setups, by giving a trusted invoker the authority to oversee transactions.
Payment by ERC-20 tokens: When the Pectra upgrade is finished, gas fees are allowed to be made by ERC-20 tokens instead of just ether.
Increase the staking limit: When the Pectra upgrade is finished, the staking limit for validators is expected to be increased by 64 times, going from the usual 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH.

Also, EIP-2751 is implemented in Pectra to handle the operational load created by the large stakeholders. There are over one million validators on Ethereum, slowing down the system. The update of EIP-2751 reduces the number of validators in the ecosystem, enabling staking platforms to allocate fewer resources to solve the excessive latency.

It's also important to note that EIP-3074 moves developers one step closer to enabling assets to be retrieved via "social recovery" in case their private keys are lost. This is a significant development for the Ethereum ecosystem. However, it won't be prepared for Pectra in its entirety because wallets can only assign tasks to smart contracts but are unable to start transactions at this time.

The Limitations That EIP-3074 Yet to Solve

So far, the upgrades to Ethereum are all on the bright side, but there are always rooms to improve. For example, when the account delegation is revoked, any authorization will also be automatically revoked the next time another transaction is sent, which means users would need to reauthorize it. Also, EIP-3074 limits its capacity to impact numerous chains simultaneously.

Some users worry that with EIP-3074, a single malignant transaction can wipe out the user's entire wallet via a batched transaction. However, experts argue the possibility when the wallets are well-designed. "I'm not aware of a consumer wallet today that is vulnerable to this [risk]. That was an early research audit task," said Dan Finlay, the co-founder of MetaMask, in an X post. "All a wallet has to do to eliminate this risk is to disallow blind signing opaque hashes, and also not allow signing with this reserved prefix," he added.

Conclusion

Ethereum served as the groundbreaking platform for numerous cryptocurrencies and decentralized smart contracts. The community and developers keep focusing on major improvements. The developers are now working to implement EIP-3074 into the Ethereum blockchain for scalability, functionality, and robust security. This will allow validators to stake up to 2,048 ETHs instead of 32 ETHs, allowing them more staking.

This release is poised for Ethereum to overcome key challenges such as scalability and validation limits. However, developers are also evaluating the possible vulnerabilities of the EIP-3074 and the Pectra upgrade, which will be made public later this year.

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Ethereum's EIP-3074 Upgrade and What to Expect