Post-Pectra in Practice: A Public Dashboard for Real-World P2P Metrics

Networking
1

pectra-info-og
pectra-info-og7200×3780 353 KB

Link: https://www.pectra.info/

1. Project Introduction

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade aimed to reduce network overhead (via validator consolidation) while increasing data throughput (via blobs). But did those changes really work?

The motivation for the Post-Pectra Network Dashboard is to measure these real-world P2P effects—to verify that validator consolidation truly reduces overhead without compromising decentralization, and to assess whether the network can handle the increased data load without congestion. By monitoring peer-to-peer metrics such as bandwidth and message rates, we can provide empirical evidence of Pectra’s impact and confirm that home stakers experience reduced operational burdens post-upgrade.

A41 received a grant from the Ethereum Foundation to develop a public dashboard that visualizes the correlation between validator consolidation and network health. The project will be open-sourced.

2. What We Track

Consolidation ratio (pectra.info/consolidation)

  • Active Validators / Staked ETH
  • Consolidation Rates by Entity

Network Status(pectra.info/p2p)

  • Message counts by topic (block, attestation, blob)
  • Traffic volume per topic
  • Duplicate message rate
  • Cross-region propagation latency

All updated live. Explore the dashboard here: pectra.info

3. Technical Context

Pectra introduced two major changes to the beacon chain’s behavior:

  1. EIP-7251 enables validator consolidation by increasing the max effective balance to 2,048 ETH. This aims to reduce attestation overhead.
  2. EIP-7691 approximately doubles blob throughput, which may increase bandwidth usage.

To evaluate the tradeoffs, A41 deployed multi-region watcher nodes that listen to key GossipSub topics. Unlike metrics from a single client, these nodes provide an external, geographically distributed view of network activity.

We compute:

  • Message duplication rate — a signal of gossip inefficiency
  • Propagation latency — the delay between message broadcast and arrival across regions
  • Traffic volume by topic — a comparison of blob impact versus attestation load

Initial results indicate that the network remains stable and that validator consolidation may successfully offset the additional data introduced by Pectra.

We invite researchers to use this dashboard as a public utility for protocol validation, peer scoring experiments, and networking optimization.

4. Contribute & Request Data

To support deeper research and tooling, we provide access to raw consolidation and P2P watcher data upon request.

If you’re building a custom dashboard, analyzing propagation patterns, or validating protocol changes, we’d love to collaborate. Your feedback will help us improve both the dataset and the dashboard itself.

5. About us

A41 is a blockchain infrastructure company committed to accelerating a Verifiable World through Blockchain and Zero-Knowledge technology. As a trusted validator across networks like Ethereum, we manage over $2 billion in assets with enterprise-grade security and performance. While our foundation is rooted in validator operations, we are expanding in 2025 to become a leading infrastructure builder in the blockchain and zero-knowledge ecosystem.

4 Likes