It is quite fascinating to see crypto making waves in the Android industry, especially after it received numerous criticisms just after the first digital token was launched. In fact, surprisingly, the global crypto payment apps alone have already surpassed the $5.08 billion mark, according to GlobeNewsWire. Statista expects it to reach $45.3 billion in 2025.
Tokens like Ethereum have drawn much interest from the Android community. This network boasts unusual capabilities that can help with things like security and transparency, which have become very important in our world today. And who knows? Maybe with the continued adoption, the price of Ethereum could actually increase due to increased demand, resulting in limited supply. However, if you want to know more about Ethereum’s recent update and its possible impacts, hang around.
Past updates
You will agree that tech advancements always affect our preferences as we are always seeking ways to improve our life experiences. It hasn’t been any different in the crypto industry. Even as developers across different sectors, including Android, continued to draw upon this technology, there has been an increasing need to be more sustainable.
But as you may know, Ethereum’s Proof of Work (PoW) proved indifferent. Actually, according to experts, the mechanism could consume energy up to 50.63 TWh, comparable to the electricity usage of countries like Bangladesh. This necessitated the implementation of an eco-friendlier mechanism, which led to the shift from PoW to Proof of Stake in 2022. Surprisingly, this transition has reduced the network’s energy consumption by more than 99%. For any sustainability-conscious developer, such moves are actually good news.
After this upgrade came the 2023 Shanghai-Capella update, which would improve Ethereum’s liquidity by allowing stakers to withdraw their staked tokens for the first time. Fast-forward to March 2024, and developers introduced proto-dank sharding and blobs, improving the network’s scalability. Now that Ethereum has been advancing to improve user experiences, do you think there is anything for Android developers to gain in this forthcoming update? Well, keep reading.
Understanding the Ethereum Pectra upgrade
Just recently, core developers released an announcement confirming that Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade would go live on the Holesky and Sepolia testnests early this year (2025). And if everything is successful, the network update is expected to go live on the mainset in April. This comes at a time when Ethereum’s All Core Developers are expected to meet on March 6, 2025, to finalize their decision on Pectra’s mainnet launch.
Targeting to improve both the execution and consensus layers, this upgrade is set to bring significant changes to this network. And just as a side note, the execution layer is where smart contracts and dApps operate, while the consensus layer offers a platform for validating transactions under Proof of Stake.
A few of the things that this integration will result in include:
- Improving scalability for more transaction volumes
- Improving user experience by reducing gas fee complexities
- Better security and efficient staking
Don’t forget that online security has become a hot topic in Android development, and these benefits can really be handy. In fact, if we were to consider the statistics, you’d be surprised to learn that Build38 found that about three-quarters of mobile apps have at least one security vulnerability.
And now that Android users are actually increasing and the number of attacks targeting the sector is growing, the importance of improving security cannot be overstated. Thankfully, this Ethereum update, with its advanced security infrastructure, might actually help developers get ahead of attackers.
Key elements of this update
Well, just so you know, Pectra derives its name from the phrase ‘Prague and Electra,’ emphasizing its double focus on execution and consensus layers. At least now, the bottlenecks associated with the previous upgrades will be dealt with as we prepare for a more efficient future.
Below are a few noteworthy improvements to expect:
Account abstraction
Gas fees can sometimes make app development expensive which may make the network inaccessible to those who can’t afford them. In fact, this can even be a hindrance to scalability.
Good enough, this upgrade will allow users to pay gas fees with other tokens like USDC, leading to even more simplified interactions with dApps. And now that it will be possible for third-party services to sponsor gas fees, the costs of several transactions could actually reduce to zero.
Validator upgrades
One of the challenges of previous versions was the staking limit, which was restricted to 32 ETH. Pectra, however, is expected to increase this limit to 2,048 ETH, which will allow large-scale validators to combine their stakes.
Given the growing emphasis on efficiency, this network will achieve this by minimizing the cumulative number of validators while retaining decentralization. The EIP-7002 addition could improve flexibility and liquidity by enabling validators to trigger withdrawals directly.
Other improvements include:
- Cheaper and easily deployable smart contracts
- Improved scalability by introducing Peer Data Availability Sampling
- Optimized blob capacities
What is our last word?
Well, developers—not just Android developers—are always faced with challenges like insecurity, inefficiency and so on. Thankfully, Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is making it easy for Android developers exploring Web3 by reducing gas fees.
Now, as the gas fees continue to streamline, user accessibility is expanding, and you can see that there are more opportunities for building secure and scalable dApps. This added security comes in as a very timely advantage with developers coming up with innovative apps that merge mobile tech with decentralization. Well, the future of mobile and Web3 is already here!