Major Crypto exchange Coinbase stated it would temporarily suspend Ethereum deposits and withdrawals as the ETH network gears up for a major upgrade.

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is scheduled for Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at 3:05 a.m. PT. Pectra, a highly anticipated Ethereum network upgrade, follows a series of earlier improvements under Ethereum’s roadmap, aiming to optimize validator performance and streamline user experiences across the ecosystem.

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In a post on X, Coinbase stated that to ensure user fund safety, it will temporarily pause Ethereum deposits and withdrawals from 2:50 a.m. to 3:45 a.m. PT. During that time, initiation of new staking requests might be delayed until after 3:45 a.m. PT. However, existing staked positions will not be impacted.

In a separate announcement, PAX Gold (PAXG) on the Ethereum network has been added to the Coinbase roadmap. 

Ethereum’s next network upgrade, Pectra, is coming to the mainnet on May 7, at epoch 364032. Pectra builds on last year’s Dencun upgrade and introduces features to augment Ethereum accounts, improve the validator experience and support L2 scaling.

Pectra introduces EIP-7702, a significant step toward widespread account abstraction, by allowing users to enhance their Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) with smart contract functionality.

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Three new EIPs within Pectra are expected to improve validators’ experience: 7251, 7002 and 6110.  EIP-7251 increases the maximum balance on which a validator can receive rewards from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, via an opt-in update of withdrawal credential type.

Another major change in Pectra is EIP-7691 doubles Ethereum’s blob throughput. Blobs, introduced in the Dencun upgrade, are ephemeral data storage that L2s can employ to submit compressed transaction data and proofs to Ethereum L1. The Ethereum mainnet presently supports an average of three blobs per block, with a maximum of six to handle peak demand. With EIP-7691, these figures will increase to an average of six and a maximum of nine.