Gnosis Chain, a secure, resilient, and decentralized layer 1 network, will implement its Pectra hard fork on April 30, one week ahead of Ethereum’s planned Pectra implementation. Gnosis will adopt the full Pectra upgrade, making it the first sidechain to do so. The aim of the upgrade is to improve usability, with 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) being implemented, each designed to improve performance and functionality.
These improvements include enhanced staking capabilities, smart contract functionality for wallets (EIP-7702), account abstraction, and the ability to sponsor transaction fees. These features will make Gnosis Chain more flexible and accessible. After two successful testnet implementations in March – Chiado on Gnosis Chain and Hoodi on Ethereum – Gnosis scheduled the full implementation for April 30 while Ethereum will launch its own Pectra upgrade on May 7.
Philippe Schommers, Head of Infrastructure at Gnosis, said: “At Gnosis Chain, our goal is to be a network that accelerates the adoption of Ethereum – we prioritize being a valuable contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem. Pectra is set to transform user experience on Ethereum, which has at times been a challenge. As we implement Pectra, we hope Ethereum gains valuable insights from our experience. We’re adopting the full update with the exception of blob schedules, and we expect to be the only sidechain to do so in the immediate future.”
The Pectra hard fork will support several new beneficial features such as transaction batching, sponsored and conditional transactions, and delegated security—making onchain interactions more seamless and flexible for users. The upgrade will also raise the validator staking cap from 1 GNO to 64 GNO, enabling larger validators to get involved while still allowing smaller ones to benefit from compounding rewards. This change is facilitated by MaxEB (EIP-7251), which increases the maximum effective balance for validators, promoting more efficient staking operations. Pectra will also facilitate a number of UX improvements for users, validators, and developers across the board.
Armagan Ercan, Validator Relations Manager at Gnosis, said: “The benefits are scalability and ease of use, for both validators and users. We don’t anticipate any disruption or downtime during the upgrade. We’ll be in regular communication with our users, developers and validators throughout the process, and we’ll have a public stream during the hard fork to tell people about what’s happening.”
Gnosis anticipates that the upgrade will result in significant improvements in efficiency, requiring less power to run nodes, fewer missed attestations. It will also bring improvements like automatic compounding and introduce new features like account abstraction. The public stream for the implementation will be available here [link].