Gnosis Chain, a secure, resilient, and decentralized blockchain platform, will implement the full Pectra hard fork on April 30th. This move comes a week ahead of Ethereum’s scheduled Pectra implementation and marks Gnosis as the first sidechain to adopt the upgrade. The Pectra update aims to enhance usability by implementing 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), each designed to improve performance and functionality. Key features include enhanced staking capabilities, smart contract functionality for wallets (EIP-7702), account abstraction, and the ability to sponsor transaction fees. This will make Gnosis Chain more flexible and accessible. After two successful testnet implementations in March – Chiado on Gnosis Chain and Hoodi on Ethereum – Gnosis scheduled the full implementation for April 30th. Following a successful testnet run, Gnosis is fully prepared to implement the Pectra upgrade, marking them as the first sidechain to do so. The Pectra hard fork will support several new beneficial features such as transaction batching, sponsored and conditional transactions, and delegated security—making on-chain interactions more seamless and flexible for users. The upgrade will also raise the validator staking cap from 1 GNO to 64 GNO, enabling larger validators to participate while still allowing smaller ones to benefit from compounding rewards. This change is facilitated by MaxEB (EIP-7251), which increases the maximum effective balance for validators. The Pectra upgrade will also bring improvements in efficiency, requiring less power to run nodes and fewer missed attestations. Gnosis anticipates that this upgrade will result in significant improvements in efficiency.