The Pectra upgrade, activated on mainnet earlier this month, is doing something rare in crypto: shipping the long-promised user-experience overhaul without breaking what already works.
EIP-7702 — the headline change — allows ordinary externally-owned accounts to temporarily behave like smart contract wallets. In practical terms, that means a UK user can now batch a token approval and a swap into a single transaction, sponsor someone else's gas fees, or recover a wallet without seed phrases.
London's DeFi cluster moves first
Three Shoreditch-based protocols — Reya, Aevo, and Lyra — pushed Pectra-native interfaces within 72 hours of fork activation. Reya's order-book DEX now offers gas-sponsored trading for verified UK users under the FCA's promotional regime.
"We've cut onboarding from eleven steps to three," said co-founder Alex Lemmon. "That's the difference between a curious user and a customer."
