Pectra upgrades, reshapes user experience, and reorganizes the foundation. Can Ethereum break through the years of dilemma?

Original title: " Can Pectra, UX and Team Shuffle Revive ETH?"

Organize & compile: Patti, ChainCatcher

"One of the best qualities of Bitcoin is that its protocol is designed so exquisitely and concisely." Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, said of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency.

The timing of this remark is exactly in line with the identity crisis Ethereum is facing.

A week ago, V God wrote this sentence in his blog post Simplifying the L1. Three days later, Ethereum developers deployed the network's most complex upgrade to date to blockchain.

On the one hand, ETH set its strongest weekly performance since 2021 after Wednesday's Pectra upgrade. On the other hand, its co-founders hope to rebuild the network with a simpler architecture.

Is this the beginning of the Ethereum revival, or is it another false dawn that has been stagnant for many years and its competitors have been setting new highs?

In this article, we will explore what changes are happening in Ethereum, why these changes are important, and whether these rapid developments can lift Ethereum out of its years of downturn.

Pectra upgrade: a key battle in the Ethereum revival attempt

The success or failure of Ethereum's attempt to revive this time depends largely on its recent upgrade.

On May 7, 2024, pectra upgraded - the largest code change since The Merge (September 2022) was officially launched. This upgrade makes the wallet smarter, the validator is more efficient, and the Layer 2 (Layer 2) costs less.

The upgrade took more than a month to complete the original plan, and it changed the way Ethereum works. Among them, the core content Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-7702 gives smart contract functions to ordinary wallets.

This seemingly technical change actually reshapes the user's basic experience.

"It's only then that Ethereum really started to feel like a modern network," Binji, an anonymous contributor to the Optimism project, wrote on the X platform. He also added that the Pectra upgrade reduced the number of clicks users need to "get what they want to do."

Simply put, this upgrade brings the following conveniences to users:

• Users can now bundle multiple operations together to execute without approving each step of the transaction one by one.
• Users can pay the handling fee in stablecoins instead of using Ethereum (ETH) in every transaction.

Dapp can even pay gas fees for users, implementing the "freemium" mode, where users can interact with it without holding any ETH.
For validators, EIP-7251 has significantly increased the staking limit from 32 ETHs to 2048 ETHs. This means lower operating costs, which is especially beneficial for institutional pledges.

Layer 2 also benefits from it.

EIP-7691 doubled the blob space per block, which helped keep Layer 2 transaction fees low in the case of increased demand. This upgrade comes at the right time - Coinbase's Base Chain developer Jesse Pollak had previously warned that demand for Layer 2 will grow "10 to 20 times" by 2025.

So, can these technological improvements be transformed into a rebound in market confidence?

Historically, Ethereum’s upgrade is often accompanied by the situation of “the positive news is negative”. After the "merger" upgrade was completed in 2022, ETH price fell by more than 30%.

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However, this time the situation may be different, because the code changes are accompanied by changes in narrative and leadership.

What is the result? Within 40 hours after the Pectra upgrade went online, ETH price soared by about 40%.

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V God calls for reshaping Ethereum user experience

Three days before the Pectra upgrade was officially launched, Vitalik Buterin published an article about his most important vision over the years, "Simplifying the L1".

The core message he conveyed in his article is: Ethereum must become "close to Bitcoin" within five years.

Over the years, Ethereum has been increasing its complexity in response to various technological challenges, and now the Ethereum co-founder wants to remove these complexities to ensure the long-term viability and resilience of the network.

In his vision elaboration, he pointed out that even high school students can understand Bitcoin’s code. By contrast, Ethereum is becoming increasingly complex, limiting the range of people who can effectively contribute to it.

V God’s plan contains three radical proposals:

• Replace Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V architecture. The RISC-V architecture is simpler and more efficient, and is expected to bring "a hundred times performance improvement".
• Simplify the consensus mechanism of Ethereum through "3-Slot-Finality" and abandon complex systems such as epochs and validator shuffling.
• From data encoding to tree structure, the protocols of the entire technology stack are standardized.

Ethereum Foundation leadership reorganization

In February this year, Aya Miyaguchi, executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, announced that he would transfer to the newly established "chairman", a change that brought the end of the community's months of dissatisfaction with the foundation's leadership and direction.

Previously, critics increasingly questioned the foundation's approach - in an increasingly competitive market environment, the foundation puts the pursuit of conceptual purity above a competitive position, whether this approach can still meet the development needs of Ethereum.

The resulting restructuring was officially finalized at the end of April, marking a major governance change in the history of the Ethereum Foundation.

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The foundation’s new leadership quickly clarified its focus: expanding Ethereum mainnet capacity, improving Layer 2 rollups, and enhancing user experience.

"We know very well that the journey of developers, founders, institutions, etc. to develop and adopt Ethereum technology on Ethereum," the two co-directors wrote in a public statement.

For many years, the Foundation has maintained a "neutral" stance in the development of the ecosystem, avoiding participation in any activity that seems to be marketing or competitive positioning.

In an interview with Bankless, the newly appointed co-director Stańczak said improving communication is now a priority for the foundation and that "clear communication of information is also part of marketing."

This simple statement is a drastic change compared to the foundation's previous attitude that it was reluctant to admit that marketing is a legitimate function.

The challenge still exists

Despite these promising development trends in Ethereum, it still faces huge resistance.

Currently, Ethereum ETH is trading at about $2,200, less than half of its all-time high of $4,878 that it hit in November 2021. Bitcoin and Solana both broke previous records in 2025, but Ethereum is still hovering at a low level.

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In March this year, due to market turmoil caused by Trump's tariff policies, ETH fell more than other mainstream cryptocurrencies, and the price briefly fell below $1,600, the first low in the currency in a year and a half.

Critics point out that there are fundamental problems with Ethereum's economic model.

Layer 2 's paradox : The successful expansion of Layer 2 means that the transaction volume on the main network will decrease, which will lead to a reduction in ETH's handling fee income.

Inefficient pledge : Before Pectra upgraded, institutional pledges had to operate multiple verification nodes due to staking rules, which increased costs and reduced benefits.

Technology Debt Accumulation : Ethereum’s complexity slows down innovation and raises the threshold for participation in contribution.

In addition, competition is becoming increasingly fierce.

Solan's DEX trading volume exceeded Ethereum in February and April this year. Even in the field of institutional investment, Bitcoin ETFs account for most of the investment inflow funds. In contrast, Ethereum-related products have relatively cold market acceptance.

The leadership crisis in March made these problems even worse.

Against this background, it is not difficult to understand why the Ethereum Foundation, V God and core developers are now taking active actions from multiple aspects. After all, it is no longer sustainable to maintain the status quo.

So, can these changes reverse the challenges accumulated by Ethereum over the years?

Ethereum Change Calibration

Ethereum's current changes are not limited to individual upgrades, but a recalibration of its overall development path.

With the advancement of this series of changes, Ethereum finally realized that excellent technical capabilities alone are not enough to gain a long-term foothold in the cryptocurrency world.

The key lies in the timing of change. These changes came late after Ethereum experienced years of market share loss and poor price performance. After the Pectra upgrade, ETH price soared by 40%, indicating that investors are still interested in Ethereum. However, Ethereum faces a tough competition, with rivals integrating simplicity into design from the very beginning, rather than late transformation projects.

The Ethereum Foundation introduces technologists into management positions and recognizes the importance of marketing, which shows that it has begun to address the cultural inertia that hinders its competitiveness.

The improvements made by Pectra upgrade in the validator economic model and L2 expansion will bring positive benefits in the short term. In the long run, whether the five-year RISC-V architecture vision proposed by V God can continue to focus, will be a major challenge facing Ethereum. After all, Ethereum has often struggled to maintain focus in its past development due to many priorities conflicting with each other.

The next upcoming upgrade - Fusaka, will become a key indicator to test Ethereum's strategic transformation. If this upgrade places mainnet improvements on top of the second layer of network infrastructure, it will confirm that Ethereum’s strategic shift is real and lasting, rather than temporary.

The next 12 months will reveal whether these changes are Ethereum’s revival or simply a slow adaptation to market reality. For investors, whether the Ethereum network can firmly implement new directions can be seen from the continuous effectiveness of leadership and the advancement of the development process, which is far more important than any single technological milestone.

If Ethereum can complete this transformation while adhering to its core values, its vision of "world ledger" may reposition ETH as the cornerstone asset of the next generation of global financial system, and its value will be far beyond the current level of $2,200.