Ethereum developers launched the Pectra upgrade on the Holesky testnet, but a misconfiguration caused finalization issues, exposing critical edge cases. While Besu, Nethermind and Geth faltered, Erigon and Reth held steady — highlighting the importance of client diversity. Developers stress the issue won’t impact mainnet, keeping Pectra’s April launch on track.

Data availability market share comparison:

L2BEAT debuted a DA throughput dashboard today that tracks the share of total data posted across Ethereum blobs, Celestia and Avail. The data reveals a stark shift in new supply coming online from Celestia, causing once-dominant Ethereum blobs to account for a shrinking portion of onchain data availability.

With blobs nearly 99% full, rollups like Base are pushing capacity limits on Ethereum. The upcoming Pectra upgrade will expand blob space as current constraints are already driving adoption of alternative DA layers. 

Celestia has emerged as the top choice, while Avail topped in December at about 5%. Ethereum still accounts for the vast majority of DA fees, according to Blockworks Research’s dashboard.

Total data posted to Celestia, however, has skyrocketed over the past three days, the dashboard shows.

— Macauley Peterson

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Ethereum devs triage testnet

Ethereum developers on Monday initiated the Pectra upgrade on the Holesky testnet to evaluate the upgrade’s production readiness.

Shortly after activation, the Holesky testnet experienced issues with finalizing transactions. Hildobby, a data analyst at Dragonfly, noted that Holesky was down for almost two hours following the upgrade. Hildobby attributed it to “buggy code [causing] an invalid block that most execution clients accepted.”

The issue affected Besu, Nethermind and Geth, while Erigon and Reth operated correctly.

However, developers assessed that the issue is unique to Holesky — a result of a misconfigurating specific to that testnet that wouldn’t occur on Ethereum mainnet. It’s not a problem with Pectra code, per se, according to Ethereum Foundation's Parithosh Jayanthi.

“There are learnings we can take forward, but it isn't a bug with a wide surface area,” Jayanthi said. “We may take some time to manually verify some things, but the problem seems fully explained.”

A case like this shows the benefits of client diversity. A heterogeneous client ecosystem ensures that no single software implementation becomes a systemic point of failure, improving Ethereum's resilience and decentralization.

Meanwhile, efforts are underway to rectify the issues on Holesky. But “recovery is very difficult,” Geth developer Marius van der Wijden said.

“This whole thing will make Ethereum much stronger,” according to van der Wijden. Waxing poetic, he added “we will mend the cracks with gold and be better prepared for any eventualities in the future.”

Pectra aims to introduce account abstraction and bolster layer-2 scaling solutions:

• EIP-7702: A new transaction type allows Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily adopt smart contract-like behavior by dynamically assigning executable code.

• Increased Blob capacity: Pectra doubles Ethereum's blob capacity, increasing the average number of blobs per block from three to six. Blobs serve as temporary data storage for layer-2 solutions, enabling them to submit compressed transaction data to the mainnet more efficiently to reduce transaction costs. 

• Validator reward cap increase: Pectra raises the maximum balance of which a validator can receive rewards, from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. This change encourages larger stakes and potentially enhances network security and scalability by reducing the total number of validators — currently over 1 million. 

This Holesky deployment is part of the critical testing phase. The Sepolia testnet will follow before the anticipated mainnet launches in April.

— Macauley Peterson

Monad's early ecosystem review

Monad's public testnet launch saw strong initial traction, with 57 geographically distributed validators and over 20 applications going live on day one. The ecosystem is heavily focused on trading, with teams leveraging Monad’s parallel execution for fully onchain CLOBs, perpetuals and high-speed financial apps.

Kuru and Drake Exchange stand out as key DeFi projects. Kuru combines a CLOB DEX with AMM features and token launch services, while Drake — backed by experienced HFT traders — introduces a dual-vault system for perps trading. MEV and staking infrastructure is also shaping up, with aPriori ($10 million raised) and FastLane (Polygon’s 68% validator adoption MEV solution) developing custom solutions for Monad’s unique execution model.

Other notable projects include Nitro Finance’s integrated DEX-lending hybrid, Ammalgam’s "Impermanent Gain" lending model, and emerging consumer applications like Narrative’s AI-driven portfolio vaults and Rare Bet Sports’ onchain fantasy sports platform.

Monad's upcoming mainnet launch, which will introduce real economic incentives, will determine whether this momentum translates into sustained adoption.

For an in-depth look, see Danny K’s full report.