Ethereum's next network upgrade, Pectra, is scheduled to activate on Mainnet at epoch 364032, which lands at May 7, 2025, at 10:05:11 UTC. This is your definitive guide to the Pectra upgrade.
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Local Activation Time: May 7, 2025 at 10:05:11 AM UTC
Pectra is the amalgamation of the execution layer's "Prague" upgrade and consensus layer's "Electra" upgrade. It introduces enhancements aimed at improving scalability, validator operations, and user experience, and is one of the most significant upgrades to Ethereum to date. For more information on the upgrade, check out the Ethereum Foundation blog post.
Pectra is a hard fork for the Ethereum network, meaning that you'll need to upgrade your node to participate. We've created a simple tool to help you through the process.
Ethereum is a complex system, and it can be overwhelming to keep track of all the moving parts. We've got you covered with a list of key events to watch out for:
Event
Description
Electra activation
The Electra activation is the first step in the upgrade process, and is the point at which the network will begin to produce Electra blocks.
Block proposals are the first indicator that validators on the network successfully upgraded, and a high proposal rate is a good first sign that the network is healthy.
This time we're watching for attestations to be produced. This means that other validators on the network were able to import, verify, and attest to the proposed Electra blocks. If we see a high attestation rate, it's a very good sign that the network is healthy.
Blocks, and their associated blobs, need to be seen by 66% of the validators in the network otherwise they run the risk of being orphaned. Thanks to our wonderful contributoors, we have a real-time view of the network and can see if blocks and blobs are arriving on time. This is especially important with the inclusion of EIP-7691, which increases blob throughput.
Our team runs multiple nodes on the network, and we constantly build "throw away" blocks to test all clients' ability to build blocks for the current slot. This gives us immediate feedback on any issues that may arise with clients, reducing the response time for client developers!
Some of the Pectra specific features, such as consolidations and deposits will take a longer period of time to test. The testing and client teams will be looking through everything that happens with a fine comb and announce the success of the fork once they are done!
This upgrade is a monumental achievement for the Ethereum ecosystem. After a full year of hard work from Core Devs, we're beyond excited to see it go live. A massive thank you to everyone who's been part of this journey with us.
We want to give particular thanks to the contributoors sharing their node data with the ethPandaOps team. This data gives us a view into the network we've never had before during critical forks. It helps us jump on problems quickly and to sleep better at night, while also allowing the wider community to be more informed when making decisions about future upgrades.
