Ethereum Foundation has clarified that the upcoming Pectra upgrade will not include the highly debated EOF changes as those will come with the next upgrade, Fusaka.
In his April 28 post on X, Ethereum Foundation Co-executive Director Tomasz K. Stańczak said that the upcoming Pectra upgrade, slated for May 7, does not include EOF, stating:
“The Pectra upgrade does not include EOF, nor [is it] intended to include EOF. Everything on Pectra is going as planned for the May 7th release.”
EOF, which stands for Object Format, is a major overhaul of Ethereum’s execution engine intended to optimize and modularize the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The EOF proposal has sparked intense debate among Ethereum developers in recent months, with many criticizing it for its unnecessary complexity.
Despite this, Ethereum leadership decided to go ahead with implementing Full EOF — but only with the next network upgrade, Fusaka, which is now tentatively slated for Q3/Q4 this year. Tim Beiko, who runs Ethereum’s core protocol meetings, told participants during Thursday’s All Core Developers call, “We can’t choose not to do something just because it’s complex.”
Pectra, the upgrade set for May 7, is aimed at improving Ethereum’s validator UX, making it possible for users to pay transaction fees in USD Coin (USDC) instead of ETH, increasing validator staking limit from, and more.
Fusaka, the following upgrade, is more ambitious. Besides restructuring how smart contracts are written and executed through EOF, it aims to make Ethereum network more efficient and scalable. This is meant to improve the performance of Ethereum’s base layer, which has been steadily declining, leading several major players to sharply reduce their Ether holdings.
According to Lookonchain, Galaxy Digital recently deposited 65,600 ETH (worth $105.5 million) to Binance and then withdrew 752,240 Solana (SOL), suggesting it sold its ETH to buy SOL. Paradigm has also recently cut its ETH exposure by selling 5,500 ETH ($8.66M) to an institutional brokerage platform Anchorage, according to EmberCN.
“While institutional investors initially bought into the ‘ultra-sound money’ narrative, they’re now facing a reality where decreasing protocol revenue and weakening tokenomics create legitimate concerns,” Jayendra Jog, co-founder of Sei Labs, told Cointelegraph.
