Protocol: Second Faulty Test for Upcoming Ethereum 'Pectra' Upgrade Could Lead to Delayed Mainnet Hard Fork

Protocol: Second failed test for Ethereum's anticipated 'Pectra' upgrade could lead to delayed mainnet hard fork

Also: New leadership at EF; BOB and Fireblocks tier 2 integration; new MetaMask roadmap.

Margot Nijkerk , 5 March 2025, 19:58 UTC

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly roundup of the most significant developments in crypto tech. My name is Margot Nijkerk, and I’m CoinDesk’s Ethereum reporter.

In this issue:

By subscribing, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and agree to our terms of service and privacy policy .

• Ethereum's Second 'Pectra' Test Failure Could Delay Upgrade
• Ethereum Foundation Appoints New Co-CEOs Following Leadership Changes
• Layer-2 BOB's 'Bitcoin DeFi' Continues to Grow with Fireblocks Integration
• Popular Crypto Wallet MetaMask Introduces New Strategy

This article was published in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter covering cryptocurrency technology, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.

Network news

ETHEREUM’S PECTRA TEST FAILS – DELAYS?: Ethereum developers were initially happy on Wednesday as the Sepolia testnet appeared to be testing Pectra, the most important blockchain upgrade since 2024. However, just hours after the test, Sepolia began to encounter errors. It was the second failed test for the long-awaited Pectra upgrade, which is designed to improve Ethereum’s efficiency, user experience, and validator system. The problems prompted some calls from developers to delay the upgrade. Wednesday’s (March 5) Sepolia test was supposed to be the final step before Pectra launched on the Ethereum mainnet. The test initially appeared to be successful, but developers later noticed that empty blocks were being added to the chain. The Ethereum Foundation attributed the issue to “an issue with Sepolia’s permissioned deposit contract” that “prevented many execution layer clients from including transactions in blocks.” In other words, the issue was due to a misconfiguration specific to the Sepolia test, rather than a flaw in Pectra itself. However, the test did raise concerns about whether Pectra had been sufficiently tested. Ethereum's Holesky testnet had previously also encountered configuration issues, this time caused by misconfigured validators. — Sam Kessler Read more.

ETHEREUM FOUNDATION APPOINTS NEW CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS : The Ethereum Foundation (EF), a non-profit organization supporting the development and research of the Ethereum blockchain, announced in a blog post the appointment of Xiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stanczak as its new co-executive directors. This follows the departure of Ai Miyaguchi, who became the new president of EF. The leadership changes come amid intense discussion in the community about EF’s role in the ecosystem, as some blamed the organization and its leaders for the price of the Ethereum (ETH) token lagging other cryptocurrencies, while the blockchain attracted fewer new developers than its rival Solana for the first time. Additionally, former EF researcher Danny Ryan revealed that he will be joining Etherealize, a new project aimed at bringing ETH to Wall Street. – Margot Nijkerk Read more.

BITCOIN LAYER-2

Источник