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Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Margaux Nijkerk, the Ethereum protocol reporter at CoinDesk.
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Ethereum's Second Buggy 'Pectra' Test Could Lead to a Delayed UpgradeEthereum Foundation Picks New Co-Executive Directors, Following Leadership ReshuffleLayer-2 BOB's 'Bitcoin DeFi' Continues Progress With Fireblocks IntegrationPopular Crypto Wallet MetaMask Unveils New Roadmap
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ETHEREUM’S SECOND BUGGY TESTNET FOR PECTRA – DELAYS?: Ethereum developers on Wednesday initially celebrated a seemingly successful test of Pectra, the blockchain’s most significant upgrade since 2024, on the Sepolia test network. However, hours after the test, Sepolia began to encounter errors. It was the second buggy test for the highly anticipated Pectra upgrade, which is designed to improve Ethereum's efficiency, user experience, and validator system. The issues have led to calls from some developers that the upgrade be delayed. Wednesday’s Sepolia test (March 5) was expected to be the final step before Pectra’s launch on Ethereum’s mainnet. Initially, the test appeared to succeed, but later, developers noticed empty blocks being added to the chain. The Ethereum Foundation attributed the issue to "an issue with Sepolia's permissioned deposit contract," which "prevented many execution layer clients from including transactions in blocks." In other words, the problem stemmed from a misconfiguration specific to the Sepolia test, rather than a flaw with Pectra itself. Despite this, the test has raised concerns about whether Pectra has undergone sufficient testing. The previous test on Ethereum’s Holesky testnet also ran into configuration issues, that time caused by misconfigured validators. — Sam Kessler
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