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Pectra upgrade scheduled for testnets.
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XMTP goes live on testnet.
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Alexey Pertsev granted conditional release.
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Ethereum core developers have scheduled slots for the Pectra upgrade on the Sepolia and Holešky testnets. The activation will first occur on Holešky at slot 3,710,976, expected on Monday, February 24, 2025, at 21:55 UTC. Sepolia’s activation will follow a week later on March 5, 2025. The Ethereum mainnet activation date for Pectra will be decided after the ACDC call on March 6, 2025. The upgrade, which consists of the Prague upgrade on the execution layer and the Electra upgrade on the consensus layer, marks Ethereum’s largest upgrade by the number of EIPs. Among the 11 scheduled EIPs, Pectra will introduce a 2x increase in the target and max blob count per block, along with account abstraction EIP-7702.
XMTP, an open protocol for secure end-to-end encrypted messaging, is now live on testnet. It enables millisecond message delivery via an offchain broadcast network, with consensus maintained by an Arbitrum Orbit chain that settles on Base. XMTP also uses USDC as the native gas token for all transactions on the network. Designed for secure, private, and censorship-resistant communication, XMTP supports a decentralized messaging ecosystem. Leading providers such as Coinbase Wallet, Circle, ENS, a16z Crypto, Alchemy, Faction, and Mask are leveraging XMTP. Node operators can contribute to the network by running an XMTP node.
Alexey Pertsev, a developer who helped write open-source code for Tornado Cash, announced his release from pretrial detention as he prepares to appeal his money laundering conviction. His release is subject to electronic monitoring by Dutch authorities. Pertsev has already spent over a year in custody. In May 2024, Dutch judges sentenced Pertsev to 64 months in prison and initially denied his request for bail.
