In this issue of Coin Metrics’ State of the Network, we analyze the early impacts of Pectra, focusing on how raising Ethereum’s max effective balance and doubling Ethereum’s blobspace are impacting staking dynamics and the Layer-2 ecosystem going forward. With these EIPs in focus, we also highlight key changes in related Ethereum’s metrics since the upgrade.
Key Takeaways:
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Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade went live on May 7, raising the validator max effective balance from 32 to 2048 ETH (EIP-7251) and doubling blob space to support Layer-2 scaling (EIP-7691).
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Over 11,000 validators have consolidated so far, reducing the active validator set by ~16,000 while maintaining overall staked ETH and raising the average stake per validator to ~32.4 ETH.
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The number of blobs posted to Ethereum has increased from ~21K to ~28K, though rollup demand remains below the new target of 6 blobs per block.
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Layer-2 transaction counts have climbed as costs fall, with total blob fees near zero. A rise in fees would require greater blob demand from rollups.
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