In a recent Execution Layer meeting, the Ethereum developers revealed important EIPs that will be added to the upcoming Pectra update.
For the uninitiated, EIPs, or Ethereum (ETH) Improvement Proposals are technical standards used to describe updates for the Ethereum network. During the meeting, the developers confirmed that EIPs 2935 and 3074 will be integrated into the Pectra update.
EIP 2935 will let blockchain contracts hold block hash values and allow the BLOCKCHAIN (0x40) opcode to read said contracts. By saving the block hashes inside the state, the developers plan to save disk space by removing the need to store long historical data.
Another proposal that was greenlit for the update was EIP 3074. Currently, users are required to sign transactions every time they wish to interact with a smart contract. EIP 3074 will add the AUTH (0xf6) and AUTHCALL (0xf7) opcodes to delegate authorization permissions to the smart contracts, allowing them to sign transactions instead of the user.
Meanwhile, EIP 7623, which seeks to adjust the calldata pricing, is also under consideration for the Prague update. The Pectra update will be a combination of two upgrades: the Execution Layer-based Prague update, and the Electra upgrade, which will occur on the Consensus Layer.