Pectra – Ethereum’s Last Hope?
VanEck explains in his monthly report that Ethereum's survival is at stake in 2025.
In a video looping on social networks, Vitalik Buterin can be seen singing and dancing on a stage, with an uneasy gesture that has become the Ethereum founder's trademark image. The caption, “All your savings are in this man's hands” is unmistakable: “We're cooked”.
This picture pretty much sums up the prevailing sentiment among holders of ethers, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum Blockchain. The network is moving forward in slow motion, having its market share nibbled away by faster, more efficient competitors, such as Solana. Users are being encouraged to use Layer 2s such as Base or Arbitrum rather than the slower, more expensive Ethereum mainnet.
“This decline is largely due to the erosion of the fundamental characteristics that made Ethereum so valuable,” explains a VanEck report.
The Ethereum Blockchain is no longer the one on which Meme Coins are created. Users now prefer Solana. Cheaper, faster, and above all, it enables users to stay on the same network without having to perform complex operations every time. Even the Ethereum Foundation, which was supposed to bring stability and growth to the decentralized ecosystems of Web3, is on the verge of explosion. By comparison, the Solana Foundation is a star performer.
VanEck's report: the Pectra update is Ethereum's last hope
Ethereum's major problem is obvious: Ethereum wants to be everywhere at once.
At the same time, many areas of Web3 that are now considered fundamental were created thanks to Ethereum. Vitalik Buterin's blockchain can do it all and dominates volumes in virtually every important sector of the ecosystem.
But in this context, updates have to solve all problems at once, and not improve one sector at the expense of another. It's an 8-dimensional puzzle to which the Pectra update provides a solution.
First step: blobs. This new way of grouping layer 2 transactions increases mainnet speed for L2s while reducing costs. In other words, it's not a question of reversing the L2 - mainnet balance, but rather of lubricating the machine. With Pectra, the number of blobs per block should double.
Secondly, a central update in Ethereum's operation: users would no longer send transaction requests to the blockchain, but rather “intentions”, a kind of request for results. Instead of saying “I want to send 1 ether to this address”, they would say “I want this address to receive 1 ether from me”. With this example, it's hard to see the difference. But for more complex transactions, this approach would save the user from having to perform convoluted operations, such as bridging, which are often the source of hacks or malfunctions.
The network validators, who become “solvers”, seek to give the user the fastest, most efficient path.
“With the introduction of intents [result queries], users may no longer need to resort to bridges, reducing both security risks and transaction times.”
These seemingly minor changes go to the very root of Ethereum and could considerably improve the functioning of the world's most important Blockchain after Bitcoin.
But will this be enough to avoid a fatal fall, crush the competition and, why not, revive the price of Ether? The future will tell.
Let me know in the comments if you still believe in Ethereum. To read VanEck's full report on the subject, click here:
