What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is currently the second largest cryptocurrency platform by market capitalization, supporting smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum focuses more on functionality and programmability, serving as the core infrastructure for DeFi, NFTs, and L2 networks. Its native token is ETH, which can be used to pay transaction fees and participate in network staking.

Pectra upgrade officially launched, what changes does it bring?

Pectra will be officially activated on the Ethereum mainnet on May 7, 2025, making it one of the most ambitious upgrades since ‘The Merge.’ This upgrade combines several improvements to the execution layer (Prague) and the consensus layer (Electra), aiming to enhance the user experience, staking mechanism, and data processing capabilities of Ethereum.

The three major core updates include:

• EIP-7702: Account Abstraction First Step
  Users can combine multiple operations into one transaction, interact on-chain without owning ETH, support third-party payment of Gas fees, and introduce social recovery features.
• EIP-7251: Increase in Staking Limit
  Raising the maximum staking amount for each validator from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH helps with node consolidation and reduces hardware costs, but it also raises concerns about centralization.
• EIP-7691: Extend blobspace
  Increasing the number of blobs data that each block can carry enhances L2 data availability, helps reduce rollup costs, but may compress on-chain revenue for ETH.

Binji Pande (Optimism team member) said: “Pectra makes Ethereum not only more powerful, but also smoother and easier to use.”

Current ETH price performance and technical analysis

Image:https://www.gate.io/trade/ETH_USDT

As of May 19, 2025, the current price of Ethereum is 2406 USD. The Pectra upgrade did not trigger significant volatility, and ETH is still oscillating within the symmetrical triangle at the end.

Technical Analysis:

• 14-day EMA and 50-day SMA: The price is temporarily holding the moving average support, but the downside pressure is gradually increasing.
• RSI indicator: the Relative Strength Index has dropped below the neutral line, indicating weakening momentum and a bias towards the bearish side.
• Stochastic Oscillator: Testing the midline level suggests a weakening short-term momentum.

Investors should pay attention to the follow-up trends

• Fusaka upgrade expectations: Ethereum developers have shifted their focus to the next major upgrade, Fusaka, which is expected to go live by the end of 2025 and may become the next price catalyst.
• Market liquidity changes: With the promotion of EIP-7702 to drive account abstraction, the user threshold will be significantly reduced, which is expected to attract more application users and drive the growth of network activity and ETH demand.
• L2 ecological impact: The expansion of blobspace may increase the usage of L2 networks (such as Arbitrum, Optimism), indirectly driving the rebound of on-chain ETH transaction volume.

Summary and Investment Recommendations

The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is of great significance, optimizing the user experience and network efficiency from a technical perspective, marking an important step towards a more scalable and user-friendly direction for Ethereum. Although there has been no significant price volatility in the short term, the long-term potential is worth paying attention to.

Beginner investment advice:

• Adopt a dollar-cost averaging strategy to avoid chasing highs in the short term.
• Pay attention to the changes in technical patterns and set stop-loss levels.
• Track the progress of the Fusaka upgrade and EIP implementation.
• Pay attention to on-chain data such as L2 activity, ETH burn amount, and staking ratio.

The evolution of Ethereum’s technology is still underway, and each upgrade is a step towards a globally scalable Web3 network.