The Pectra hard fork will be activated on the mainnet of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization on May 7, as decided by Ethereum’s core developers during their latest call.

Previously, the upgrade was tentatively scheduled for April 30.

Pectra introduces a series of improvements aimed at enhancing Ethereum’s usability and efficiency. This large-scale upgrade includes 11 key EIPs that will be implemented simultaneously. One of the major innovations is the addition of smart contract functionality to wallets, simplifying their use and recovery.

The hard fork’s implementation in the Sepolia (consensus layer) and Holesky (execution layer) testnets encountered issues. In Sepolia, an attack by a malicious actor caused additional complications.

In Holesky, even after the network was restored, it was impossible to verify the upgrade’s functionality related to validator exits.

As a result, developers decided to create a new long-term testnet to finalize testing. The test network, named Hoodi, was launched on March 17, and the Pectra upgrade was deployed there within the same month.

Earlier, in February, Ethereum developers discussed accelerating network upgrades. The previous hard fork, Dencun, took place in April 2024.