Ethereum's "Pectra" Upgrade Boosts Staking Efficiency by 6300% New Hampshire Approves 5% Public Funds for Bitcoin Investment Citigroup Partners with SDX to Tokenize $75 Billion Pre-IPO Market

Ethereum has rolled out its highly anticipated “Pectra” upgrade, marking the blockchain’s most significant changes since its transition to proof-of-stake in 2022. The update, which went live at 10:05 UTC and finalized approximately 13 minutes later, introduces a series of enhancements aimed at improving staking efficiency and wallet functionality. A key feature of the upgrade is the increase in the maximum stake for validators from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, allowing infrastructure providers to consolidate their operations more efficiently. This change is expected to reduce costs and alleviate congestion on the Ethereum network, as larger participants can now combine their stakes into fewer nodes, thereby cutting overhead and reducing strain on the peer-to-peer network.

Another significant addition is EIP-7702, which introduces temporary smart contract functionality to regular wallets. This feature enables users to pay transaction fees in stablecoins and recover accounts without needing seed phrases, making crypto wallets more user-friendly. The upgrade also includes nine other technical changes, primarily targeted at developers and staking services. Ethereum Foundation’s Tim Beiko highlighted the benefits of the upgrade, noting that it allows small operators to compound their stakes directly while larger entities can consolidate validators to reduce bandwidth use.

In a groundbreaking move, New Hampshire has become the first U.S. state to approve the use of public funds for investing in bitcoin. Governor Kelly Ayotte signed the bill into law, granting the state treasurer the authority to allocate up to 5% of available funds into digital assets with a minimum market cap of $500 billion. Currently, this limits investment options to bitcoin, the only cryptocurrency large enough to meet the criteria. This legislative victory for crypto advocates comes after similar efforts in other states, such as Arizona and Florida, faced setbacks or were vetoed. The new law positions New Hampshire at the forefront of crypto finance policy in the U.S., setting a precedent for other regions to follow.

Citigroup has announced a partnership with Switzerland’s SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) to digitize the late-stage, pre-IPO equity market, valued at $75 billion. This collaboration aims to tokenize private shares on SDX’s blockchain-based Central Securities Depository (CSD), with Citi serving as both the custodian and issuer agent. The platform is set to launch by the third quarter of 2025 and will initially be available to institutional and eligible investors in Switzerland, Singapore, and parts of Asia, excluding U.S. investors. The project targets high-growth companies that are staying private longer due to narrow IPO windows, addressing the surge in demand for secondary market trading of private shares. The SDX platform, built on R3’s Corda blockchain, uses a Swiss legal framework that allows tokenized securities to appear in investor accounts like traditional assets, without requiring new technical skills or wallet setups. This approach contrasts with earlier Web3 efforts that encountered legal and regulatory challenges.