Pectra Goes Live This Week – Here’s What It Means for the Price of ETH

It’s the same old story: developers devote years of their lives to writing code and running testnets to bring us better blockchain technology and the first question they get asked is “Wen moon?” It’s almost as if the price of ETH is a simpler concept for retail traders to grasp than Verkle Trees and blobs. That’s why devs dev and traders trade.

But with Pectra set to be live on Ethereum from May 7, the devving part of this particular hard fork is now done and dusted. The trading part, however, is just getting started. And while predictions of the Ethereum network’s future hinging upon the market’s reaction to Pectra are overblown, there’s no denying there’s a lot on the line. Like a $24B liquid staking sector and a DeFi industry that’s looked devoid of ideas for quite some time.

If Pectra can reinvigorate the latter without breaking the former, it’ll make everyone happy – ETH bulls especially. Not only do such optimists still exist, but their numbers are growing stronger with every passing day now the messy business of Pectra’s testnet bugs have been consigned to history. For those who’ve been watching the charts rather than running the clients, here’s what Pectra means for the price of ETH, not just this week, but through 2025 and beyond.

Pre-Pectra Price Predictions

Few Ethereum experts have been predicting Pectra to send ETH headlong into a multi-week green candle. Because that’s not going to happen. This is a protocol upgrade: not a trillion-dollar market buy. But when pushed on how the hard fork will impact demand for ETH, the developer community appears confident that better times are ahead for everyone – traders included.

Alex Loktev, CRO at ETH staking service P2P.org, has been primarily interested in what Pectra means for the platform’s clients, and from an integration perspective, P2P has been Pectra prepped for more than six months. But when pressed on the market implications of the hard fork in a recent interview, Loktev ventured that while the event may not instantly “pump” ETH’s price, it will indirectly strengthen Ethereum’s economic fundamentals by locking up more of the supply and creating increased yield opportunities.

He’s likely correct in holding this confident yet calm prediction of better times lying ahead for ETH and the Ethereum ecosystem at large. But how good can it realistically get? And when can the long road to recovery, after years of playing second fiddle to Bitcoin – and a dozen other Layer 1 coins – begin?

Making ETH Great Again

Hard forks often generate anticipation, as seen with past upgrades like The Merge back in 2022 and last year’s Dencun upgrade. The question, as with Bitcoin’s pre-programmed halving cycle, is whether the event itself is frontrun or lags, with the real market movement arriving months after the fact. What is clear is that the actual improvements Pectra introduces won’t be felt for a while yet since it will take developers time to deploy dapps that fully utilize its technology.

For instance, enhancements such as gas subsidies and passkey sign-ins may well attract new users and eventually drive greater demand for ETH, but that won’t occur overnight. For what it’s worth, Dencun recorded a pre-fork price rally that saw ETH peak at around $4,000 in March 2024 but it had corrected to ~$3,200 by April 2024 and it’s been downhill since then.

But with ETH having looked sluggish for over a year now, there is growing consensus that the only way left is up. Bears are exhausted, so the reasoning goes, and ETH has been in a downtrend against USD and BTC in particular for months. Even if the prospect of Pectra improvements such as cheaper L2 fees, higher staking caps for validators, and more efficient use of block space don’t spark a revival, surely the chart has bottomed and recovery can begin.
Crypto price predictions are ten a satoshi, but there’s one source that carries greater gravitas within the industry. Its name is Polymarket and it’s got form for calling things accurately, because the votes are cast by users who are placing real money on the line. They got the 2024 US Presidential election right where mainstream pollsters failed badly. And at the time of publication, Polymarket is favoring ETH to reach $1,900 in May. It might not be the moon, but it’s a modest move in the right direction. A small step for ETH and perhaps a giant leap in the quest to make Ethereum great again.