Bectra Hardfork

Bectra is Berachain's EVM Pectra upgrade, which introduces a variety of changes, including major updates:

1. Validators can withdraw all or part of their $BERA stake.
2. All users can take advantage of EIP 7702, which enables any EOA to set its code based on any existing smart contract.

WARNING

All users, whether hosting an RPC or running a validator, must upgrade their Execution Client and Consensus Client to continue following the chain.

Bepolia Hardfork Upgrade Timeline

As a first step, Berachain will implement the upgrades in phases, with the first phase being the full upgrade on Bepolia Testnet.

Date	Milestone
Week of April 21	Documentation Release
Week of April 28	Beacon Kit 1.2.0-rc Released (Node operators upgrade Beacon Kit and geth/reth/etc.)
Week of May 5	All Infrastructure Providers Upgraded
May 7 - 12:00pm EST	Bectra Hardfork on Bepolia

After evaluating the upgrade on Bepolia, Berachain will schedule a hardfork for Berachain Mainnet at the end of May. The final release date for Berachain Mainnet will be announced closer to the upgrade.

Bepolia Execution Client Upgrade Instructions

The first upgrade is for the Execution Client, which enables new operations at the designated fork activation time.

The following execution client versions have been tested with the upgrade and are the recommended versions to use:

Client	Version
Geth	1.15.10
Reth	1.3.12
Nethermind	1.31.8
Besu	25.4.1
Erigon	3.0.2

Step 1 - Deploy Genesis File

Use the following execution client genesis files to ensure your node is compatible with Bectra, and place them in their respective locations based on the execution client you are using:

Reth, Geth, Besu, Erison

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berachain/beacon-kit/refs/tags/v1.2.0.rc0/testing/networks/80069/eth-genesis.json;
md5 eth-genesis.json;

# [Expected Exact Output]:
# 9e32b2a1a5eb434d7b2fbaa27752b751

Geth Additional Steps

WARNING

If you are using Geth, you will need to perform the following steps to ensure that the new genesis file is applied correctly.

Other execution clients automatically load and apply the new genesis file. For Geth, you must run geth init again after the genesis file has been placed in the correct directory:

TIP

If your node is an archive node and ordinarily runs with --state.scheme hash, then you must provide that option to geth init as well.

geth init --datadir /path/to/geth/data /path/to/eth-genesis.json;

The geth datadir should contain the following directories:

tree datadir;

# [Expected Output]:
# datadir
# ├── keystore
# └── geth
#     ├── blobpool
#     └── chaindata

Example Successful Geth Bectra Upgrade:

Nethermind

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berachain/beacon-kit/refs/tags/v1.2.0.rc0/testing/networks/80069/eth-nether-genesis.json;
md5 eth-nether-genesis.json;

# [Expected Exact Output]:
# 04e689193d6506f36abf98c23b75a07e

Step 2 - Start Execution Client

Start the execution client and check the logs for indications of successful fork activation.

# [EXAMPLE Reth - Expected Similar Output]:
# Post-merge hard forks (timestamp based):
# - Shanghai                         @0
# - Cancun                           @0
# - Prague                           @1746633600

Bepolia Beacon Kit Upgrade Instructions

Beacon Kit 1.2.0-rc is required in addition to the execution client configuration for the Bepolia Hardfork.

Step 1 - Configure App Toml

Revise your app.toml by adding this configuration to the beacon-kit section. Create the section if it doesn't exist:

File: ./.beacond/config/app.toml

[beacon-kit]

chain-spec = "testnet"

Alernatively, you can use the --beacon-kit.chain-spec command line option to set/override this.

/path/to/beacond --home $BEACOND_HOME --beacon-kit.chain-spec=testnet

Alernatively, you can use the --beacon-kit.chain-spec command line option to set/override this.

/path/to/beacond --home $BEACOND_HOME --beacon-kit.chain-spec=testnet

Step 2 - Verify Upgrade

Start beacond and verify that the following is logged. Note the "Electra Fork Time" in the banner.

./beacond start; # Use --home as needed;

# [Expected Output]:
# +=========================================================================+
# + ⭐ BeaconKit on GitHub @ https://github.com/berachain/beacon-kit        +
# + 🧩 Your node is running version: v1.2.0.rc0                             +
# + ♦ Eth client: unknown (version: unknown)                                +
# + 💾 Your system: linux/amd64                                             +
# + 🍴 Deneb1 Fork Time: 1740090694                                         +
# + 🍴 Electra Fork Time: 1746633600                                        +
# + 🦺 Please report issues @ http://github.com/berachain/beacon-kit/issues +
# +=========================================================================+