Mallesh Pai, a senior research director at Consensys, asserts that Ethereum's Pectra upgrade—raising the staking cap from 32 to 2,048 ETH—does not threaten decentralization. During a recent discussion, Pai noted rewards for validators would still be proportionate to their Ether holdings, ensuring larger validators do not gain unfair advantages. The Pectra upgrade streamlines network operations by consolidating numerous virtual keys potentially operated by substantial validators into fewer keys, potentially increasing the total number of validators to about 30,000. This consolidation aims to reduce auxiliary work and allow stakeholders to focus on critical issues like lowering gas fees. The upgrade is also seen as a way to attract institutional participants, providing an easier environment for Ether staking integration, especially within exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Several financial institutions have expressed interest in Ether ETFs, anticipating yield opportunities through staking, although concerns about network performance remain a significant issue.

Source 🔗