Ethereum Pectra Upgrade Goes Live, Enabling Native Account Abstraction
The long-awaited Pectra upgrade has been activated on Ethereum mainnet, bringing EIP-7702 account abstraction and significantly improving the user experience.
Ethereum's Pectra upgrade successfully activated on mainnet today at slot 10,200,000, introducing native account abstraction via EIP-7702. The upgrade allows externally owned accounts (EOAs) to temporarily delegate to smart contract logic, enabling gas sponsorship, batched transactions, and session keys without requiring users to deploy separate smart contract wallets.
The Ethereum Foundation called the upgrade "the most significant UX improvement since the Merge," noting that wallet providers can now offer features previously exclusive to smart contract wallets like Safe and Argent.
Early adoption data shows MetaMask has already shipped a Pectra-powered update enabling gasless transactions for new users, sponsored by a pool of dApp partners. Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, and Rabby have announced similar integrations shipping within weeks.
The upgrade also includes blob throughput improvements (EIP-7691), increasing Layer 2 data availability capacity. L2 fees, already low, are expected to drop further as rollups compete for the expanded blob space.
