Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade on Sepolia encounters issues

An Ethereum Foundation lead revealed the Pectra upgrade experienced issues when it was deployed on Sepolia which led to clients struggling to include transactions in blocks.

Lead developers revealed Ethereum (ETH)’s Pectra upgrade has been deployed on its final testnet, Sepolia on March 5. However, it ran into an unexpected issue regarding transaction blocks.

In a recent post, Ethereum Foundation protocol support lead Tim Beiko said that the team was currently investigating a problem caused by the custom deposit contract on Sepolia. His post came only an hour after he celebrated the completion of the long-awaited upgrade’s final testing phase on the Sepolia testnet.

“Well, seems like I jinxed it. We’re investigating an issue caused by the custom deposit contract on Sepolia. This has caused some EL clients to have issues including transactions in blocks,” wrote Beiko in his post.

Earlier on, lead Ethereum developer Terrence had shared the results of the final testnet, saying it had “just finalized with a perfect proposal rate.” Similar to Beiko’s post, Terrence also hoped he would not “jinx it this time.”

As previously reported by crypto.news, the upgrade was scheduled for a mainnet launch on April 8 once both the Holesky and Sepolia testnets have successfully been upgraded to Pectra

The upgrade went live on Holesky on Feb. 24. Much like with Sepolia, it encountered issues with led to the upgrade failing to finalize. On Feb. 28, the Ethereum Foundation claimed all significant issues regarding the upgrade had already been resolved. It remains to be seen whether Ethereum will stick to the scheduled date for its Pectra upgrade launch or further delay it until all issues are resolved.

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade aims to improve ETH staking, layer 2 network scalability as well network capacity. It consists of 11 separate Ethereum Improvement Proposals or EIPs and is the first major upgrade for the network since the Dencun upgrade in March 2024.