Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade doesn’t pose a threat to decentralization, according to Mallesh Pai, senior research director at blockchain software firm Consensys, describing the update as a cleanup of the behind-the-scenes “busy work” currently handled by validators. During a May 9 Cointelegraph X Space, Pai said a validator’s chances of proposing a block or earning rewards remain tied to how much Ether (ETH) they hold, adding that larger validators don’t gain any new advantages under the upgrade: “Rewards continue to be proportional to the amount of ETH you have. […] it's not the case that if you're a big validator, you somehow have any more advantages than you did before.”Pectra is Ethereum’s most extensive network upgrade since the Merge took place in September 2022. Pectra allows validators to stake as much as 2,048 ETH, up from the previous limit of 32 ETH. The new standard has raised community concerns about the risks of centralization on the network.According to Pai, the Pectra upgrade has taken “a bunch of busy work that the network was doing behind the scenes and removed it.”Pai noted that while there are about a million technical validators on Ethereum, many aren’t truly distinct — large validators often