How does Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade improve smart contract performance?

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade enhances performance by integrating Prague and Electra, optimizing smart contracts via account abstraction (EIP-7702), improved opcodes (EIP-3074), and validator staking (EIP-7251), alongside Rollup scaling (EIP-7691).

Mar 04, 2025 at 02:46 pm

• Feature expansion : EIP - 7702 Allows externally owned accounts (EOAs) to act temporarily as smart contract wallets in transactions. In the past, EOAs functions were limited, and now they can perform complex operations, such as completing multiple instructions in a single transaction, such as batch processing of transactions, which greatly improves operational efficiency, simplifies processes, and reduces transaction costs.

• Permission management upgrade : Introduce a permission downgrade mechanism. Account holders can assign specific permissions to subkeys, such as limiting subkeys can only conduct transactions within a specific amount, preventing unauthorized transactions and abuses, enhancing account security, and ensuring the security of smart contract execution.

• Transaction sponsorship convenience : Supports transaction sponsorship, in which one account can pay transaction fees for another account. On some financial service platforms, service providers can pay transaction fees for customers, attract more users, optimize user experience, and facilitate the promotion and application of smart contracts in financial scenarios.

• Multi-transaction merge : Introduces AUTH and AUTHCALL opcodes, allowing users to merge multiple transactions into one operation. For example, users can integrate multiple token transfer transactions without multiple operations, saving time and gas fees, and improving the efficiency of smart contract execution, especially suitable for frequent trading scenarios.

• Gas Fee Funding : Project parties can fund user transactions and pay Gas fees. In some newly launched DeFi projects, in order to attract users, the project can pay Gas fees for early user transactions, lower the threshold for user participation, and promote the application of smart contracts in project promotion.

• Wallet recovery mechanism : Added a new method to restore the wallet when the user loses his private key. Through specific smart contract logic, combined with the recovery conditions set by the user before, such as multi-signature verification, it can help users find their wallets, ensure the security of smart contract-related assets, and enhance users' confidence in smart contract applications.

• Increased pledge limit : Increased the maximum pledge limit for verifiers from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. Previously, if a verifier wanted to pledge more ETH, he needed to set up a new node, which was costly and complicated to operate. Nowadays, more pledges can be made in one node to attract large institutions to participate. For example, some financial institutions can increase their investment in Ethereum nodes.

• Decentralization and security enhancement : More institutions participate in node operations, increase node diversity, and improve the degree of decentralization of Ethereum network. At the same time, nodes supervise each other to reduce the risk of malicious behavior in a single node, ensure the safe and stable network environment of smart contract operation, and provide basic guarantees for the efficient execution of smart contracts.

• Improve node operation efficiency : reduce the number of verification nodes, such as Lido projects, can integrate node resources. While ensuring network verification capabilities, it reduces operating costs, improves node response speed, indirectly improves smart contract transaction confirmation speed, and optimizes smart contract performance.

• Maximum blob number increases : Increase the maximum blob number, blobs are a specific structure for Ethereum to store transaction data. More blobs can accommodate more transaction data, improving Rollup expansion capabilities. As a layer two expansion solution, Rollup can package and process a large number of transactions, reducing the burden on the main network.

• Increased transaction throughput : enables Rollup to process more transactions within unit time, improving the overall transaction throughput of Ethereum. In high trading volume scenarios, such as the peak trading period of large decentralized exchanges, transactions can be processed quickly, transactions can be reduced, transaction delays can be ensured, smart contract transactions are executed in a timely manner, and user experience can be improved.

• Reduced transaction costs : As transaction processing efficiency increases, unit transaction costs are reduced. When users interact with smart contracts, the Gas fees paid are reduced, attracting more users to use smart contracts, promoting the prosperity of the Ethereum ecosystem, and promoting the widespread development of smart contract applications.