# Ethereum Advances Despite Volatility with Pectra Upgrade
Ethereum (ETH) continues to progress technologically amid price volatility. Scheduled for mid-March, the ‘Pectra Upgrade’ is touted as the largest upgrade in Ethereum’s history, poised to significantly enhance network functionality and user experience through multiple Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs).
The Pectra Upgrade includes several changes: improvements in user experience through account abstraction, increased rewards for validators, and optimization of network performance. Currently, Ethereum is trading around $3,200 to $3,300. Despite high expectations for the upgrade, the market has not shown a clear upward momentum.
# Validator Rewards Increase to a Maximum of 2048 ETH
Anthony Sassano, an independent Ethereum educator and angel investor, highlights ‘Account Abstraction’ as a key change in the upgrade. Particularly through EIP-7702, users can consolidate the burdensome approval and swap procedures into a single transaction, significantly enhancing the user experience.
EIP-7251 proposes increasing the maximum reward for validators from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. Consequently, validators will not need to gather 32 ETH to receive rewards, and operators managing validators can consolidate them, reducing the operational burden on the network.
# Key Proposals for Network Performance Optimization
EIP-7691 aims to increase blob processing capacity to address scalability issues. Currently, the Ethereum network’s blob capacity is nearly saturated, hindering the scaling of rollups and layer 2 solutions and leading to higher transaction fees. The upgrade will increase blob capacity from 3/6 to 6/9, allowing for more transactions and reducing user costs.
Additionally, EIP-7623 proposes raising the cost of calldata for rollups to encourage the use of blobs, optimizing network resources. EIP-7002 will enable withdrawals by validators from the execution layer, supporting the creation of reliable staking pools. This will reduce intermediary dependency and enhance the reliability of withdrawals and reward distributions.
Moreover, EIP-7685 aims to enhance communication between the execution layer and the consensus layer, allowing smart contracts to interact directly with the staking layer. This reduces the need for reliable oracles, improving network efficiency.
EIP-2537 will enhance the cryptographic process, making zero-knowledge proof (zk) technology more efficient. In addition, four other EIPs will be implemented, including functions to support block hash queries and on-chain validator deposits.
