Engineering

AERE upgrades to Pectra, EIP-7702 + BLS precompiles now live

By AERE Network May 31, 2026 5 min read

On May 31, 2026 at 00:57:31 UTC, AERE Network activated the Pectra EVM ruleset at block 2,075,363. The chain produced its post-fork block on schedule with no downtime, no rollback, and no halt. Three of three validators participated cleanly through a rolling restart performed an hour beforehand.

Pectra is the EVM ruleset adopted by Ethereum mainnet on May 7, 2025. AERE has now reached functional parity with the current Ethereum mainnet EVM specification. Any Solidity or Vyper contract written for Ethereum post-Pectra runs identically on AERE chain 2800.

What changed for users: nothing visible, no wallet update, no contract migration, no action required. The upgrade unlocks new capabilities for developers and dApps that choose to use them. Existing wallets and contracts continue to work unchanged.

What Pectra brings to AERE

EIP	What it enables
EIP-7702	EOA delegation to smart-contract code. A normal wallet (MetaMask, Trust, Rabby) can temporarily act like a smart wallet, batched transactions, sponsored gas, daily spending limits, session keys, without changing its address.
EIP-2537	BLS12-381 curve precompiles at addresses `0x0b`, `0x11`. On-chain BLS signature verification becomes ~70× cheaper. Powers trustless cross-chain proofs, light clients, validator aggregate signatures.
EIP-2935	Historical block hashes (up to 8,192 blocks back) accessible via a system contract. Enables trustless cross-chain state proofs without external oracle.
EIP-1153	`TSTORE` / `TLOAD` transient storage opcodes. Gas-efficient reentrancy guards, callbacks, and atomic-execution patterns.
EIP-5656	`MCOPY` opcode for efficient memory copying. Reduces gas costs for many libraries.
EIP-6780	`SELFDESTRUCT` only deletes contracts created in the same transaction. Major security improvement against state-bloat and upgrade-rug attacks.
EIP-7516	`BLOBBASEFEE` opcode (returns 0 on AERE since the chain has no consensus-layer blob market).

The upgrade procedure (full transparency)

The upgrade was executed as a timestamp-activated hardfork. The procedure:

Confirmed Hyperledger Besu version v26.4.0 running on all 3 validators (Pectra-capable).
Generated a new genesis.json with cancunTime and pragueTime set to unix timestamp 1780189051 (45 minutes in the future).
Backed up the existing genesis as genesis.pre-pectra.bak on every validator.
Pushed the new genesis to all 3 validators.
Rolling-restarted each validator one at a time, with 5+ minutes between restarts. QBFT quorum (2 of 3) maintained throughout, no halt.
Waited for the fork timestamp. The chain transitioned cleanly at the first block produced after 00:57:31 UTC.
Verified the new EVM ruleset is active by inspecting block-header fields: post-fork blocks now contain blobGasUsed, excessBlobGas, parentBeaconBlockRoot (Cancun) and requestsHash (Prague). Hyperledger Besu only emits these fields when the corresponding hardforks are active.

QBFT-specific notes

AERE is a permissioned-validator QBFT chain, it does not have a separate proof-of-stake consensus layer like Ethereum mainnet. Two Pectra EIPs are affected by this:

EIP-4788 (parent beacon block root): the field is present in every block header but is set to 0x00…00 because AERE has no beacon chain. Applications that depend on a real beacon root should not target AERE for that data; everything else is unaffected.
EIP-4844 blobs: the related header fields exist (blobGasUsed, excessBlobGas) but AERE does not produce or accept blob-bearing transactions. BLOBBASEFEE always returns 0.

All other Pectra EIPs are fully functional, including the marquee additions: EIP-7702 (account abstraction), EIP-2537 (BLS precompiles), and EIP-2935 (historical block hashes).

What this unlocks for the AERE ecosystem

The Pectra ruleset is the foundation for several upcoming AERE features:

Wallet UX modernisation: EIP-7702 lets any existing wallet on AERE gain smart-wallet capabilities (batching, gas sponsorship, session keys) without users having to migrate to a new wallet address.
Cross-chain integration: cheap BLS verification (EIP-2537) makes it economically practical to verify Hyperlane, LayerZero, or AERE-own validator-set signatures on-chain, the cryptographic backbone for trustless bridging.
Verifiable cross-chain state: combined with EIP-2935 historical block hashes, contracts can prove the state of one AERE block from another without an external oracle. The basis for light clients and rollup interop.
Cancun opcodes: every library written for Ethereum post-March 2024 can now be deployed without compiler downgrades.

How developers should use this

Solidity compilers from 0.8.24 onwards support Cancun opcodes. 0.8.25+ recommended. Hardhat, Foundry, and Remix all support targeting Pectra-equivalent chains by setting the EVM version to cancun or prague in their configuration. Examples:

Hardhat: in hardhat.config.ts, set solidity.settings.evmVersion = "prague".
Foundry: in foundry.toml, set evm_version = "prague".
ethers.js: no changes required; transaction type 0x04 (EIP-7702 SetCode) is supported in [email protected]+.

The AERE SDK has been bumped to v0.4.0 with the Pectra ruleset documented in addresses.ts. The documentation page now includes a full EVM-ruleset section.

What's next

The next ruleset upgrade on the roadmap is Fusaka, Ethereum's December 2025 hardfork, which adds the secp256r1 precompile (RIP-7951). That precompile makes native Face ID, Touch ID, and Windows Hello signature verification economically viable on-chain (~3.5k gas instead of ~250k via Solidity). It is the cryptographic foundation for passkey-based wallet flows. Activation date will be announced separately.

Beyond that, the AERE engineering plan includes the Pyth Network pull-oracle deployment, Hyperlane cross-chain messaging, the Across SpokePool for intent-based bridging, drand-backed verifiable randomness, a batch-auction settlement contract for MEV-resistant swaps on AereSwap, a staked-AERE gas-quota paymaster, and a developer-fee-share programme. Each of these will land as an independent upgrade, no single chain-halting moment is required for any of them.

The Pectra activation makes those features possible at modern EVM gas costs. The work continues.

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