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Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has soared 20% within 24 hours following the successful deployment of its Pectra upgrade on May 7.
What Happened: This surge, the largest single-day gain for ETH in four years, has reignited optimism among investors and developers, positioning Ethereum for a potential price breakout.
The Pectra upgrade, described as the most significant overhaul since the 2022 Merge, introduces a suite of improvements aimed at enhancing scalability, user experience and staking efficiency.
As the crypto community buzzes with excitement, analysts are dissecting whether this milestone could propel ETH past the $2,000 mark for the first time since March 2025.
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Speaking with Benzinga, Peter Chung of Presto Labs said despite the price move, as the macro worries continue to subside on the back of the positive tariff-related headlines, investors are willing to move further up on the risk curve to higher beta asset beyond Bitcoin, especially given alts huge underperformance so far.
Moreover, he added that the series of announcement last night on tokenization, like Robinhood’s (NASDAQ:HOOD) putting U.S. stocks on blockchain, Supperstate launching ‘Open Bell’, bode well for Ethereum, which is the most popular based layer for the tokenization.
The Pectra Upgrade: A Game-Changer For Ethereum
Activated on May 7, 2025, at 10:05 AM UTC, the Pectra upgrade represents Ethereum’s 16th major network update since its inception in 2015.
Combining the Prague execution layer and Electra consensus layer upgrades, Pectra integrates 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), making it the largest hard fork in the blockchain’s history.
According to Tim Beiko, who oversees Ethereum’s core protocol meetings, Pectra is second only to the Merge in its transformative potential, redefining staking economics and validator efficiency across the ecosystem.
Among the standout features is EIP-7702, which introduces account abstraction, allowing externally owned accounts (EOAs) to function like smart contracts within a single transaction.
This enables users to pay transaction fees with tokens other than ETH and enhances wallet functionality, making Ethereum more user-friendly.
Ivo Georgiev, CEO of Ambire, a self-custodial smart wallet, called EIP-7702 “the single greatest UX upgrade to Ethereum so far,” noting that wallets like Ambire and Trust Wallet have already adopted these features.