zkSteak is a (made up) private ETH staking protocol that provides an anonymous way for clients to 'steak' their ETH Let’s go through how each of the new 11 EIPs deployed in the Ethereum Pectra upgrade would make this project feasible and more cost effective. A thread

Let’s start with EIP-7702: enabling EOA codes. Normal Ethereum wallets can now operate as smart contracts, which enables tons of new programmable features. In zkSteak, this hides a user’s wallet address and amount staked by automatically routing transactions through a series of relayers and batching them into a single ZK proof, making all txs anonymous. As a bonus, zkSteak can now also cover gas fees for all txs by enabling gas sponsorship.

To verify each deposit, zkSteak converts batches of txs into a zk-STARK (a type of ZK proof). These proofs are very compute-intensive because of their complexity, so they take longer and are more expensive to process than other proofs. EIP-2537 enables faster ZK proof verification which decreases processing time and cost, making this step more feasible at scale.

To deposit funds onchain, proofs are passed to relayers and submitted for staking (with no link to the depositor). EIP-7549 lets submissions reach finality faster because it drastically cuts down the number of votes needed to reach consensus from over 1,300 to 22. This EIP makes it possible to aggregate votes from each group of validators and submit them in batches instead of individually, reducing the total amount of votes and cutting down on time.

EIPs 6110 and 7002 make the depositing and withdrawal processes more efficient. EIP-6110 cuts down the time of settlement from ~9h to just 13 mins by depositing funds into the execution layer (the current block of txs) instead of the Beacon chain (the part of the chain responsible for staking). EIP-7002 then lets users trigger a withdrawal through a smart contract, letting each tx keep its anonymity by using ZK proofs to hide wallet addresses/amounts.

Pectra provided Ethereum with a major upgrade: EIP-7251, which raised the max amount a single validator can stake from 32 to 2,048 ETH. This lets zkSteak users further compound their staking rewards by depositing more money per validator. Additionally, EIP-7685 enables more efficient validator management through smart contract interactions, where zkSteak can actively manage all its validators through automated systems (ex. automatically checking validator statuses and adjusting them).

To store generated proof data, Ethereum uses components called blobs that attach to a block. Blobs are the preferred method of storing raw data within Ethereum blocks, and EIP-7623 increases the cost of non-blob raw data to encourage protocols to use them. EIP-7691 raises the max amount of blobs that can be attached to each block from 4 to 8 so it can hold more proof data, while EIP-7840 enables dynamic configuration to determine how many blobs are needed per block. Both of these EIPs let zkSteak cut down the cost of each tx and the savings are passed onto its users.

The last EIP is 2935, which saves the last 8,192 block hashes in stateless memory to help verify recent chain history without making external data calls. This enables faster and more secure verification for zkSteak txs because data can be found directly onchain without having to call an oracle to lookup necessary info (ex. looking up a user’s stake reward amount) which could result in data leaks.

The Pectra upgrade is a major step forward for the Ethereum chain because it greatly improves the UX of its users. While zkSteak isn't a real protocol, it showcases all the possibilities of the improved Ethereum chain. The newly deployed EIPs help ease pain points and enable new features onchain which are all part of a long term vision to scale and improve the network. For a full breakdown of each EIP, check out this article by Bankless: https://www.bankless.com/read/your-ethereum-pectra-upgrade-cheat-sheet…

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