The intersection of the 2025 public chain track: Ethereum Pectra's cold encounter and Solana InfiniSVM's ambition to break the deadlock

At around 8 a.m. on March 7, White House AI and cryptocurrency director David Sacks posted on social media that President Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve a few minutes ago. However, after this huge positive news came out, the market did not seem to buy it and directly retreated to >5.6%. This seems to have become a daily routine recently, and it will fall whenever there is a positive news. And eth and sol, which may be reserved, were not spared. But there seems to be a more important topic for eth and sol, which is the major upgrade that is coming: Ethereum's Pectra vs. Solana's SIMD-0228.

Quick upgrades

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade and Solana’s SIMD-0228 proposal are two important events in the blockchain field in 2025, representing different paths for technological optimization and economic model adjustment respectively.

Ethereum Pectra upgrade

The Pectra upgrade is scheduled to be implemented in March or April 2025, combining the Prague and Electra phases to improve network performance and user experience. Research shows that it includes account abstraction (allowing to pay gas fees with tokens such as USDC, DAI), staking optimization (increasing the maximum stake of verifiers from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH), and smart contract optimization. Current data shows that about 33.8 million ETH is pledged, accounting for about 28% of the total, and the reward rate is about 3.81% (Datawallet ). This may attract more users, but centralized risks (such as large players controlling more nodes) are worth paying attention to.

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade was originally planned to be completed in one go, but the development team found that implementing all functions at the same time was too complex and had high risks. Therefore, they decided to divide the upgrade into two phases.

• Phase 1 (early 2025) : Focus on account abstraction and direct improvements related to validator. These improvements will make Ethereum more user-friendly while improving staking rewards.

• Phase 2 (expected in 2026) : Introducing more technical optimizations, such as EVM Object Format (EOF) aimed at improving the efficiency of smart contracts , and PeerDAS technology that further enhances Layer 2 scalability .

• Pertra: The upgrade mainly includes the following aspects:

1. Account abstraction

2. Smart contract efficiency

3. Verifier-oriented optimization

4. Optimize data management through Verkle tree

5. Layer 2 Solutions and PeerDAS

Solana SIMD-0228 Proposal

The 0228 proposal is to dynamically adjust the inflation rate based on the pledge rate, with the goal of maintaining a 50% pledge rate and reducing the SOL's issuance rate in the long run. Solana's current inflation model is a curve that gradually declines over time. At the time of the mainnet launch (March 2019), an inflation rate of 8% was set and decreased over time. The current inflation rate is about 4.8%, and the long-term target inflation rate is 1.5%-2%. If this proposal is passed, the short-term pledge income will be reduced (based on the pledge rate between 1% and 4.5%) and the long-term inflation rate will approach 1.5%. The current pledge rate is 70%. Therefore, if 228 is passed, the pledge SOL income will be reduced in the short term, the additional issuance will be reduced in the long term, and the pledge yield will be adjusted in real time according to the pledge rate. It is worth mentioning that the additional SOL is considered ordinary income and requires tax payments at least in the United States. Therefore, a selling pressure proportional to the additional issuance will be generated here.

Solana's SIMD-0228 proposal will begin on March 6, 2025, with a goal to reduce SOL inflation from 4.5% to 0.87% through a dynamic emission mechanism. It adjusts emissions based on the pledge participation rate: the issuance decreases when the pledge rate is above 50%, and the issuance increases when it is below 50%. Currently, Solana's pledge rate is about 63.43%, about 322.3 million SOLs are pledged, and the inflation rate is about 4.5%. This may stabilize SOL value, but dynamic mechanisms may affect market confidence.

Pectra is more comprehensive, covering technical levels; SIMD-0228 focuses on economic adjustments. Pectra may improve efficiency, but centralization is controversial; SIMD-0228 may attract investors, but emission uncertainty needs to be observed. In the future, on-chain data (such as changes in staking rate) will reveal its actual impact.

Prospects

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade and Solana SIMD-0228 proposals represent different paths for the development of public chains:

• Pectra consolidates the ecological advantages of Ethereum through comprehensive technological improvements, suitable for investors and developers who focus on long-term technology and user experience. The community's reaction seems to be cold. As of March 7, the Ethereum Pectra test errors again, and empty block problems began to occur. Some developers called for the main network to be upgraded or postponed in April, and ETH market sentiment hit the bottom.

• In contrast, SIMD-0228 enhances the value attractiveness of SOL through economic model optimization, and this proposal is intended to adjust the SOL's issuance rate. At this time point, it is essentially in the context: - Solana ecosystem has ushered in prosperity in 2024, but trading activities have gradually begun to decline from All Time High; SOL has become a compliant asset and is turning to ETFs and institutional assets. SOL's short-term selling pressure increases and long-term selling pressure decreases, which can release liquidity or bring a short-term SOL on-chain market.

The success of both depends on implementation effectiveness and market acceptance. The centralized risk of Pectra and the impact of market confidence in SIMD-0228 will be the focus of future observations, and on-chain data (such as staking rate, inflation rate changes) will become key indicators for evaluating their impact. We will wait and see in the next two months