Key Takeaways
- Ethereum’s (ETH) Pectra upgrade went live on May 7, doubling blob usage.
- The price of ETH showed positive movement, rising more than 10% following the upgrade.
- Anurag Arjun, who co-founded Polygon and Avail, discusses their impacts with .
Pectra, the inaugural major update for Ethereum since Dencun, was activated on May 7th. This upgrade brought with it an unprecedented total of 11 new Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs).
Supporters anticipate that the upgrade will rejuvenate enthusiasm for Ethereum, whereas critics view it as yet another unsuccessful attempt within what they see as an outdated system.
This piece will examine what Pectra offers and delve into the discussion with Anurag Arjun, one of the co-founders of Avail.
What is Pectra?
Pectra represents Ethereum’s biggest update since The Merge.
phrases from the Ethereum group
, The integration was focused on the protocol, whereas Pectra is aimed at serving the people.
Specifically, it seeks to enhance the user experience through various improvements:
-
Fewer clicks
: By using “approval and confirmation,” we can simplify the process to decrease the number of clicks required for each action. -
Smarter Wallets
Pectra enables regular wallets to group multiple transactions together and bypass approval notifications. -
Cheaper Transactions
: Layer-2 scaling will improve with more blobs, especially during high traffic. -
ETH staking upgrade
: The Validator cap has been raised from 32 to 2048 ETH.
Finishing with the Ethereum team’s statement, “The merge altered the functioning of the protocol; similarly, Pectra will transform how it feels.”
Avail Co-founder Discusses Petra
Avail is a flexible blockchain designed to offer data availability support to other blockchains.
mainly focusing on rollups.
It was created by Anurag Arjun, one of the founders of Polygon, who talked about the Pectra update with .
He mentioned that apart from enhancements in scalability, security, and user experience, Pectra plans to increase the number of Blobs twofold; however, even then, it won’t be enough. While sustained demand could cause fees to rise dramatically, this hasn’t occurred yet.
Arjun thinks that Avail could have a substantial impact ahead, as rollups and data availability gain more importance in the future.
Rollups will become the foundation of Web3 as verifiable ledgers, with data availability emerging as the core bottleneck as thousands of rollups—many settling beyond Ethereum—demand seamless interoperability and scale.
Arjun finally mentioned that Ethereum is dedicated to a rollup-focused future, with rollups flourishing due to their reliance on data availability. As more rollups emerge, this would increase the demand for data availability, potentially resulting in greater burns and possibly,
a deflationary Ethereum.
Ethereum Blob Fees
The
Dencun Upgrade
introduced Blobs, which are
large packets of data
Included in Ethereum blocks, kept for just 18 days.
Therefore, they do not consistently take up space within the blockchain.
Blobs can store up to 128KB of data.
, and several blobs can be contained within a single block.
Blobs previously had a target of 3, and the Average Blob count per block has been at this target since November 2024.
The Pectra update raised the Blob objective to 6, and the Blob count per block has climbed past 3, although it hasn’t hit the new target just yet.
Over the last 24 hours, the
On average, Blobs have been around for about four.
Over the last thirty days, blob fees have ranked as the second highest.
contributor to ETH burns
, coming second only to Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
The figures indicate their growing significance since
they were behind DeF
I made one Ethereum transfer and seven stablecoin transactions in January.
In the DeFi sector, 908 ETH was burned, Blob Fees accounted for 485 tokens burned, and ETH transfers resulted in 251ETH being burned.
Another intriguing advancement is that the
The Ethereum supply has temporarily turned deflationary.
since the upgrade, while
fees are increasing
, observing a rise in network traffic.
There are several rumors circulating
Pectra developed a flaw that continuously burns the leftover Ethereum supply, but this claim hasn’t been confirmed yet.
The rumours likely stem from the fact that the
Ultrasound.money
page is updating the actual burned supply since the upgrade.
Successful Ethereum Upgrade
The Dencun Upgrade’s fee reduction played a large part in increasing Ethereum’s supply.
The increase in inflation cast doubt on Ethereum’s ability to function as money and created a pessimistic sentiment around it, contributing to its price decline.
The Pectra update represents progress toward solving the issue, evident from the supply turning deflationary once more, even if only temporarily.