Pectra Upgrade Depth Analysis: Major Changes in the Ethereum Ecosystem

The Pectra hard fork is the largest upgrade on Ethereum since The Merge, containing 11 improvement proposals aimed at reducing data costs, simplifying smart account operations, and optimizing validator operations. This upgrade brings several important changes:

1. The Blob target capacity has doubled to 6, with a hard limit increased to 9. This significantly reduces the Gas fees for L1 data availability, and transaction fees on major L2s briefly dropped to very low levels.

2. External owned accounts can now be converted into smart accounts through a single transaction, enabling features such as Gas fee sponsorship and stablecoin payment, without the need for contract migration.

3. The validator cap has been raised to 2,048 Ether, significantly reducing the DevOps costs for large operators while maintaining decentralization.

These changes lay the foundation for L2 to attract mainstream users while consolidating Ethereum's dominant position in settlement. The future winners will be those projects that can leverage new features to optimize user experience, drive data-intensive applications, and actively invest in proof compression technologies before future upgrades.

Reactions of Main Ecosystem Participants

1. Arbitrum：

   • No need to rewrite code, just upgrade the Geth client.
   • Blob capacity increased to provide more low-fee space for DEX and gaming users.
   • Promoting BoLD permissionless fraud proof, Stylus compiler, and TimeBoost transaction sorting mechanism

2. Starknet:

   • Adjusted the Blob cost model, but the Cairo fee schedule remains unchanged.
   • Re-focus on research of stateless clients
   • Plan to release Staking v2 this quarter and launch Sorter as a Service in 2025

3. EthStorage:

   • Benefiting from higher Blob activity, plans to provide ongoing data storage incentives
   • A comprehensive Geth upgrade has been enforced.

EIP Depth Analysis

1. EIP-7702 (Scaling Smart Accounts):

   • Allow EOA to act as a smart account in a single transaction
   • Implement batch calls, gas sponsorship, and stablecoin payment features
   • Expected to improve transaction success rate and enhance user experience

2. EIP-7691 (Cheaper Data):

   • Blob capacity doubled, providing more space for each Roll-up
   • Reduced the total cost of each transaction
   • Created the possibility for on-chain storage of large static websites

3. EIP-7251 (Validator cap of 2,048 ETH):

   • Reduced operational costs, with limited impact on decentralization.
   • Allow for more flexible operation of hot/cold validator replicas
   • May promote the development of re-staking and shared security markets.

Future Outlook

1. PeerDAS (Fusaka hard fork) is considered a critical and non-negotiable upgrade that will significantly enhance data availability.

2. Verkle trees and historical data expiration will further optimize storage space and client functionality.

3. SSZ object transactions and larger contract size limits are expected to improve the development experience.

4. Block-level access lists may bring performance improvements and increased Gas limits.

These upcoming upgrades will further enhance the competitiveness of the Ethereum ecosystem, consolidating its position as the main settlement layer. Industry participants expect L2 throughput to grow exponentially, driving the development of the entire ecosystem.

Investment Opportunities

1. Smart Account Infrastructure: Modular Payer Liquidity Network, Intent Relay, and AA Risk Scoring Engine.

2. Native Blob Content: Storage incentive layer and Blob-based games, AI models, and social media applications.

3. Re-staking: Transform idle collateral into protocols that can be measured for security, such as oracle proofs, bridge validations, and shared sequencer sets.

4. PeerDAS related technologies: data sampling client, proof compression circuit, and DA market.

The upgrade of Pectra to the Ethereum ecosystem has brought significant changes, laying the foundation for future development. However, the real turning point may be the upcoming PeerDAS upgrade, which will further enhance data availability and reduce costs. Investors should closely monitor innovative projects and infrastructure development in these areas.