The Ethereum Foundation has clarified details surrounding its upcoming Pectra network upgrade, confirming it won’t include the highly-contested Ethereum Object Format (EOF) changes. According to a recent announcement by Ethereum Foundation Co-executive Director Tomasz K. Stańczak, the Pectra upgrade will proceed as scheduled on May 7, 2025. Stańczak explicitly emphasized in his statement that the EOF enhancements are reserved for the subsequent network upgrade, Fusaka, tentatively set for the third or fourth quarter of this year.
EOF represents a significant structural revision intended to modularize and optimize the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s (EVM) execution processes. Over recent months, the EOF proposal has proven quite controversial among Ethereum’s developer community, with debates often centered around what critics perceive as unnecessary complexity.
Despite these persistent concerns, Ethereum leaders decided to proceed with the full EOF implementation, deferring it to the future Fusaka deployment rather than including it in the imminent Pectra upgrade. Tim Beiko, who coordinates Ethereum’s core protocol development meetings, recently reminded stakeholders in an All Core Developers call that complexity alone should not deter the project: “We can’t choose not to do something just because it’s complex.”
Scheduled for deployment on May 7, Pectra aims specifically at enhancing Ethereum’s validator user experience. Among its notable improvements, the upgrade will enable validators to accept transaction fees paid in USD Coin (USDC) rather than exclusively in Ether (ETH), alongside a series of enhancements designed to ensure smoother network operations.
Meanwhile, the subsequent Fusaka upgrade goes beyond these incremental improvements, carrying broader ambitions. Aside from implementing EOF for smart contract modularity, Fusaka seeks deeper improvements in Ethereum’s overall efficiency and scalability. As Ethereum has increasingly encountered challenges at the base layer—issues that have contributed to decreased network performance—this restructuring through Fusaka is intended as a comprehensive solution.
Concerns over Ethereum’s architectural complexity and weakening economics have grown intense enough that some major institutional players are reconsidering their exposure to ETH. Galaxy Digital recently deposited around 65,600 ETH, worth over $105 million, onto Binance and then promptly withdrew a substantial amount in Solana tokens, indicating an apparent shift from ETH to SOL. Paradigm also reduced its Ethereum holdings significantly, selling approximately $8.66 million worth of ETH to institutional custodian Anchorage.
According to Jayendra Jog, co-founder of Sei Labs, institutional investors who initially bought into Ethereum’s “ultra-sound money” narrative are now reassessing amid declining protocol revenues and weakening tokenomics, raising legitimate concerns about Ethereum’s long-term investment appeal.
