Ethereum ETH/USD activated its long-anticipated Pectra upgrade on May 7, marking a pivotal step in the network’s evolution since the Dencun fork last year.

The upgrade went live at 6:05 a.m. ET, with finality confirmed just over ten minutes later.

Pectra introduces sweeping changes across the Ethereum protocol, most notably EIP-7702, a feature that redefines how externally owned accounts (EOAs) interact with smart contracts.

For the first time, regular user wallets can execute contract logic while maintaining the same address, paving the way for smarter, more flexible user accounts.

EIP-7702 is seen as foundational for full account abstraction, where users can batch transactions, skip manual token approvals and interact seamlessly across apps.

The upgrade also brings changes to Ethereum's validator model with EIP-7251, lifting the staking cap from 32 to 2,048 ETH per validator.

This allows larger stakers to consolidate capital more efficiently, improving protocol operations and reward distribution.

Additionally, EIP-7691 doubles the number of blobs per block from three to six, improving Layer-2 throughput and lowering rollup transaction costs.

Still, the upgrade isn't without its tradeoffs.

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In a note sent to Benzinga, Muriel Médard, MIT professor and co-founder of Optimum, pointed out a rising bottleneck: network bandwidth.

"With Pectra live, bandwidth has become the binding constraint, especially as blobs must be gossiped across the peer-to-peer layer," she said. "Ethereum's ability to propagate data efficiently and predictably will define how far it can scale."

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She added that as blob sizes grow, reducing variability, not just increasing average bandwidth, is essential.

"Unpredictability undermines reliability across rollups and apps. This is now core infrastructure," Médard stressed.

Security experts have also raised concerns about EIP-7702's deeper implications.

In a blog post, CertiK, a blockchain security firm, warned that the upgrade breaks a longstanding assumption that EOAs cannot run contract code.

As a result, contracts that rely on outdated patterns like tx.origin == msg.sender for reentrancy or flash loan protection may be vulnerable.

"The trust model has changed," CertiK said in a report. "EOAs can now execute logic, creating new risk vectors in contracts that didn't anticipate this behavior."

The firm cited recent activity on Binance Smart Chain, which adopted a similar upgrade called Pascal in March, where it observed suspicious transactions exploiting these assumptions.

Developers are being urged to update their codebases and abandon any logic that treats EOAs as inherently passive.

Instead, industry-standard protections like reentrancy guards and proper logical constraints should replace fragile assumptions.

Despite these growing pains, the Pectra upgrade is widely seen as a necessary milestone.

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