Ethereum developers postponed the launch of the Pectra hardfork due to testnet deployment errors

The upgrade was originally scheduled to launch in March this year

07.03.2025 - 11:10

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What’s new? Ethereum developers have decided to postpone the release of the Pectra upgrade due to two failed test runs in the Holesky and Sepolia testnet. Although in both cases the errors were caused by incorrect test settings rather than problems with the upgrade itself, the developers decided in a call on March 6 that Pectra would undergo additional testing before launching on the mainnet.

Material by CoinDesk

What else is known? Pectra, designed to improve the speed and ease of use of Ethereum in the face of increasing competition from other smart contract platforms, includes eight major improvements.

The most anticipated is EIP-7702 or account abstraction, which allows a wallet to be used as a smart contract. The other expected improvement is EIP-7251, which will raise the limit of ETH coins to lock in staking by a single validator from 32 to 2048.

Testing of the hardfork began on February 26 in Holesky, and it was rolled out to Sepolia on March 5.

The upgrade was originally scheduled for late 2024, but its scope expanded significantly, causing a delay. The developers later decided to deploy Pectra to the mainnet in March 2025.

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As for the next steps, the developers on Thursday’s call decided to create a “shadow fork” (temporary copy) of Holesky, which failed after the Pectra rollout. Configuration issues with the Pectra test led to many validators being disabled and the network’s inability to properly record transactions.

The shadow fork will allow some key stakeholders, such as staking pools and app developers, to test their code on Pectra while the team works to rebuild Holesky.

This requires 67% of validators to reconfigure their systems and get back online. The team expects Holesky to be back up and running normally by around March 28.

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