Ethereum Pectra Upgrade

The first report from OKX Research Institute is here. The debut issue focuses on one of the hottest topics in the community right now, EIP-7702. In this in-depth article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know: why it’s being called the “ultimate form” of account abstraction, what problems it actually solves, and what the Pectra upgrade means for wallets, developers, and everyday users.

This article is a continuation of the Ethereum Pectra Upgrade series from the OKX Web3 Team, where we focus on key findings and observations that we have, along with our perspectives on smart accounts.

Pectra is the next major ethereum upgrade that is scheduled to happen April 2025. As smart contract developers, the protocol upgrade that we are most interested in is EIP 7702, which includes a new transaction type, that assigns smart contract code to Externally Owned Accounts (EOA), through delegation.Once the delegation process is complete, the EOA transforms itself into a smart account, while at the same time remains as an EOA, ultimately dependent on the transaction that is sent.While the intention of EIP7702 is to be compatible with existing solutions, we believe that this provides us with the opportunity to create a new alternative, and to start with a clean slate.