Ethereum

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10/ the merge changed how the protocol works, pectra changes how ethereum feels.

this isn’t just another upgrade, it’s a turning point.

the next era of ethereum begins now

binji on X: "the ethereum pectra upgrade is coming. it’s one of the most ambitious upgrades yet. here is what you need to know 🧵" / X the ethereum pectra upgrade is coming. it’s one of the most ambitious upgrades yet. here is what you need to know 🧵

9/ pectra is ethereum remembering what it’s for.

not just for resilience. not just for scale.

for users.

for the world.

if you want to learn more, here is another thread: x.com/binji_x/stat...

8/ upgrading a decentralized network that secures billions is like swapping an airplane engine mid-flight.

it takes hundreds of devs and years of work with dozens of teams working as one.

pectra is proof that ethereum moves and it moves together.

and this time, it moves for you.

7/ unlocking $490B of potential

ethereum already secures $490 billion in assets.

but too often, that value sits locked behind clunky UX.

pectra changes that.

it makes those assets easier to move, use, and experience.

6/ eth staking: upgraded.

staking becomes more flexible and efficient:
- raise validator cap from 32 to 2048 ETH
- faster deposit recognition
- smart contract-enabled withdrawals

less overhead, more control for validators and stakers

5/ cheaper txs

pectra upgrades ethereum’s ability to handle data.

more blobs. better scaling for L2s. lower costs especially during high traffic.

pectra doesn’t just make ethereum bigger.

it makes it smoother, smarter, and mainstream-ready.

4/ smarter wallets

wallets used to just hold keys.

now, they get a brain.

pectra lets normal wallets act like smart contracts.

you can batch transactions, skip approval popups, pay gas in any token.

less friction. more freedom. more possibilities.

3/ fewer clicks, more doing

no more "approve + confirm" loops.

no more double signing for every action.

pectra reduces how many clicks it takes to do what you want.

2/ so what’s new in pectra?

a lot.

this is where ethereum starts feeling like a modern network:
- fewer clicks
- smarter wallets
- cheaper txs
- cleaner staking

let’s break it down ↓

1/ the merge was for the protocol.

pectra is for the people.

for years, upgrades made ethereum work better.

pectra makes ethereum feel better.

it is ethereum’s glow-up.

0/ the biggest ethereum upgrade since the merge is coming.

and this time, you’ll feel it.

it’s called pectra and here’s why it matters ↓

a guest thread by binji

17/ Read the full thing here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

16/ I’m also confident DeFi will eventually become the backbone of the global financial system (at which point we’ll just call it finance) but only on a platform that prioritizes neutrality, liveness, and censorship resistance

15/ I’m excited to see what happens in the years to come. My suspicion is that a new generation of financial engineers who are unburdened by what has been will create novel products

14/ The paper also discusses other chains. It considers, then argues against, permissioned networks. But it mostly focuses on Ethereum because that’s where most DeFi happens, and the chain offers more of the decentralized and security needed to make the above possible

13/ A platform like Ethereum doesn’t just make finance faster, cheaper, and safer. It also makes it more innovative. There’s a long history of new infrastructure leading to financial innovation, like when the telegraph enabled wire transfers

12/ Put together, all these features create exciting new possibilities for financial engineers, asset issuers, and users. We’ve already seen novel products that can only exist on a public blockchain, like flash loans, but we’ve likely barely scratched the surface

11/ Where intermediation is still preferred–like to pool capital for lending and trading–smart contracts play the role of banks and brokers. This means the best of both worlds

10/ Which brings us to disintermediation. We should note that intermediaries aren’t always bad. It’s only an overreliance on them that is problematic. Crypto networks offer both options, but the default is peer-to-peer finance

9/ Trustless programmability enables composability–something TradFi systems can’t ever offer since intermediaries can deny or revoke access. On Wall Street, walled gardens and fragmentation are a feature, not a bug. Ethereum fixes this

8/ Perhaps more importantly, smart contracts are resilient and trustless. Automation is not very useful if the underlying platform can censor, or go down. Here, Ethereum is exceptional, even by blockchain standards. Blockchains should never go down

7/ Today, most financial products are already automated, but in narrow ways. Programmability via smart contracts takes things to another level, thanks to the expressivity of a Turing complete language

6/ Tokenization makes Ethereum omni-asset, with smart contracts enforcing atomic swaps. Moving vital activity–like FX trading or derivative settlement–onchain will thus make the global financial system cheaper, more innovative, and a lot safer

5/ Next, most TradFi settlement systems are single asset, meaning they manage ownership of just one thing. US dollars exist in one such infrastructure, Euros in another, stocks in a third, etc. Economic activity that involves multiple assets is full of friction and risk

4/ The likely end- state is one where crypto payments become effectively free, enabling streaming money, and raising interesting questions like “how often should bonds pay interest?”

3/ On payments: a big part of the appeal of stablecoins is their unusual cost structure. Unlike TradFi payment rails, crypto networks don’t have a business model per se, only a security model. So while legacy rails look to raise fees, crypto will reduce them

2/ The features in question are streaming payments, omni-asset settlement, programmability, and disintermediation

1/ I recently co-authored a paper with ECB Director General Ulrich Bindseil, exploring how a network like Ethereum has features that represent a leap forward in financial infrastructure and enables financial products that can’t exist on TradFi rails

0/ Ethereum is for financial market infrastructure: a guest thread by Omid Malekan