The Pectra Upgrade and the Evolution of L2s
How will the Pectra Upgrade Impact Ethereum’s Scalability?
The proliferation of the L2 ecosystem as an extension of L1 Ethereum has been a key part of the network’s global scaling ambition. To reach its goal of serving as the settlement layer for the global financial system, continued development in scaling is required. The Pectra upgrade is another step in this direction, offering substantial increases in efficiency that will help L2s process higher volumes of transactions in less time. Linea, Consensys’ layer-2 network, has the most technically advanced Ethereum-equivalent zk rollup tech that can provide the scale and speed required for this ambitious mission, and will benefit from key upgrades included in the Pectra hard fork.Pectra’s core updates — EIP-7702, EIP-7691, and EIP-7623 — will yield significant improvements to Linea.
"Pectra is really about establishing that next milestone on this journey, which is to further increase the ability for layer two rollups like Linea to scale, to process more transactions at fractions of a cent."
EIP-7702: The Rise of Smart Accounts
Much of Ethereum’s secret sauce has always been the automating and dynamic powers of smart contracts, but tapping these abilities has been difficult for non-technical users interacting via “normal” Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs). EIP-7702 bridges this critical gap by granting EOAs a temporary power-up to access smart contract capabilities during transactions. This enables entirely new flows like:
Imagine hardware wallets safely delegating a specific daily swap allowance to a MetaMask account, or seamlessly enabling subscriptions and gasless interactions directly within user-controlled accounts. These changes significantly enhance user safety, usability, and Ethereum's overall potential.
- Batch Transactions: Execute complex operations like swaps, transfers, or NFT minting in a single step, slashing gas costs and simplifying workflows.
- Gas Sponsorship: Dapps can cover transaction fees for users, eliminating the need to hold ETH or other tokens for gas.
- Custom Gas Tokens: Pay for gas using tokens like USDC or another ERC-20.
- Future-Proof Security: Introduce multisig approvals, session keys with time-bound permissions, and assign trusted agents to safeguard access, mitigating the existential fear of lost keys and boosting confidence for institutional adoption.
- ERC-4337 Compatibility: Seamlessly integrate with existing smart account standards, allowing users to delegate logic to wallets without migrating funds or bifurcating pre-existing onchain identity.
Imagine hardware wallets safely delegating a specific daily swap allowance to a MetaMask account, or seamlessly enabling subscriptions and gasless interactions directly within user-controlled accounts. These changes significantly enhance user safety, usability, and Ethereum's overall potential.
"Everyday users can now engage in powerful use cases previously exclusive to smart contracts, like delegation of fine-grained permissions."
EIP-7691: Blobs, Unleashed
Several years ago Ethereum faced a challenge: How to scale the blockchain without compromising on the decentralization that is core to its DNA?
What we settled upon was the L2 roadmap, in many ways, this roadmap has been a huge success. L2s have grown, they've collected a bunch of users, they've made transactions cheap. But Ethereum is still not adequately scaled to receive all the data from these L2s. And that means some L2s are going outside Ethereum and using third-party data availability. Both those data availability layers potentially have weaker security guarantees. Additionally, they might foreclose parts of the Ethereum roadmap, for instance, fixing interoperability between these L2s. So we need to provide the L2s with enough scale that they can continue to safely and cheaply use Ethereum for data availability.
Mallesh Pai, Head of Research, Consensys.
Blobs (Binary Large Objects) were first introduced in the Dencun upgrade as dedicated data structures optimized for rollups like Linea and others. They created a specialized, cost-effective channel for L2s to post their compressed transaction data to Ethereum.
When blobs debuted, they cut Layer 2 costs by over 90%. This update doubles down, raising the target blobs per block from 3 to 6 and the maximum from 6 to 9.
For Linea, this means lower costs and higher throughput: with twice the blob capacity, Linea can process more transactions at lower fees. This update is part of a series of updates impacting blob sizes, culminating in the next upgrade, Fusaka. Post-Fusaka L2s will have access to a target of 32 blobs with a maximum of 56, representing a 10x increase from Dencun. Pectra is an intermediate step towards Fusaka and future upgrades give us a fully scalable path to a next order of magnitude.
What we settled upon was the L2 roadmap, in many ways, this roadmap has been a huge success. L2s have grown, they've collected a bunch of users, they've made transactions cheap. But Ethereum is still not adequately scaled to receive all the data from these L2s. And that means some L2s are going outside Ethereum and using third-party data availability. Both those data availability layers potentially have weaker security guarantees. Additionally, they might foreclose parts of the Ethereum roadmap, for instance, fixing interoperability between these L2s. So we need to provide the L2s with enough scale that they can continue to safely and cheaply use Ethereum for data availability.
Mallesh Pai, Head of Research, Consensys.
Blobs (Binary Large Objects) were first introduced in the Dencun upgrade as dedicated data structures optimized for rollups like Linea and others. They created a specialized, cost-effective channel for L2s to post their compressed transaction data to Ethereum.
When blobs debuted, they cut Layer 2 costs by over 90%. This update doubles down, raising the target blobs per block from 3 to 6 and the maximum from 6 to 9.
For Linea, this means lower costs and higher throughput: with twice the blob capacity, Linea can process more transactions at lower fees. This update is part of a series of updates impacting blob sizes, culminating in the next upgrade, Fusaka. Post-Fusaka L2s will have access to a target of 32 blobs with a maximum of 56, representing a 10x increase from Dencun. Pectra is an intermediate step towards Fusaka and future upgrades give us a fully scalable path to a next order of magnitude.
"Being able to scale this L2-centric roadmap with a vision for how it's going to scale to be able to support every transaction on the planet is there. It's amazing to see both where it is now, where it's come from, and then to start to get that glimpse of the people that are living 5 to 10 years in the future."
EIP-7623: Calldata Recalibration
EIP-7623 subtly reshapes Ethereum’s economics by increasing calldata costs for data-heavy transactions.
“That nudges people towards using blobs instead, which is the direction we want the scaling to go. But it also protects the L1 against some of the worst case scenarios where if you fill a block with call data, which can be very slow to process. So making it more expensive in terms of the gas costs means you can't put as much call data in there. That brings the block size down, which means the network can deal with it, but also allows for scaling the L1 by increasing the gas limit.”
Simon Dudley, Staff Blockchain Protocol Engineer, Consensys
This will result in better cost alignment across layers: legacy gas estimation tools often misprice transactions. By harmonizing L1 and L2 cost structures, Linea (and other L2) users will get more accurate estimates. It will also promote ecosystem-wide efficiency: as non-rollup calldata use declines, Ethereum’s blocks become leaner, accelerating consensus and freeing resources for critical operations.
“That nudges people towards using blobs instead, which is the direction we want the scaling to go. But it also protects the L1 against some of the worst case scenarios where if you fill a block with call data, which can be very slow to process. So making it more expensive in terms of the gas costs means you can't put as much call data in there. That brings the block size down, which means the network can deal with it, but also allows for scaling the L1 by increasing the gas limit.”
Simon Dudley, Staff Blockchain Protocol Engineer, Consensys
This will result in better cost alignment across layers: legacy gas estimation tools often misprice transactions. By harmonizing L1 and L2 cost structures, Linea (and other L2) users will get more accurate estimates. It will also promote ecosystem-wide efficiency: as non-rollup calldata use declines, Ethereum’s blocks become leaner, accelerating consensus and freeing resources for critical operations.
"Lower data costs and predictable performance make rollups more attractive, accelerating the adoption of optimistic and ZK-based L2s and driving user growth across the Ethereum ecosystem."
Timeframe
Pectra is set to hit Mainnet on May 7, and Linea will integrate these upgrades over subsequent months. This deliberate sequencing allows the Linea team to thoroughly test all the components within the Linea architecture, ensuring a seamless integration for users of the network.
However, this doesn't mean Linea users must wait entirely. Through features like eth_SendBundle, Linea already offers developers a preview of some EIP-7702 capabilities, making it fertile ground for enterprising devs who want to start building dapps with these powerful new features.
However, this doesn't mean Linea users must wait entirely. Through features like eth_SendBundle, Linea already offers developers a preview of some EIP-7702 capabilities, making it fertile ground for enterprising devs who want to start building dapps with these powerful new features.
"With Pectra and Ethereum, we're able to bring this technology to population scale; we're able to improve people's lives, help builders get value that they create back to them. And it's all been the fruition of the work that we've been doing for such a long time."
