The Pectra hardfork is imminent with testnet releases scheduled for end of February and early March (do we have the timestamps already in?).

For the upcoming RC releases (and then the final ones) we should therefore directly jump to Pectra as the default HF, then people can directly use the latest and greatest stuff. This should also time well with our stable releases going along with Pectra doing its latest eventual stabilization round(s) before soon going live on mainnet.

Update work is similar to e.g. latest #3566 making Cancun the default HF.