Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade Pushed Back to Early April

While no definite date has been announced, Ethereum’s core developers have agreed to push the Shanghai/Capella (also dubbed ‘Shapella’) upgrade to early April in their latest All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) call just yesterday, March 2.

Originally slated for the end of March, project lead Tim Beiko announced that the mainnet launch for the Shanghai upgrade will be pushed a further two more weeks at the earliest in order to give node operators time to upgrade their clients. He has also noted the success of the Shanghai upgrade on the testnet Sepolia tested last Tuesday, February 28. The Sepolia testnet is a network with limited functions that only allowed for the operation of validator nodes.

The next step is to deploy the upgrade on the Goerli testnet, a test network allowing for more varied functions such as the testing of smart contracts and decentralized applications. More specifically, the much-anticipated phased withdrawal of Ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain will be part of the testing. The Goerli test is slated for March 14, 2023 and Beiko has announced another ACDE call on March 16, where they would “probably” set the date of the mainnet launch, assuming things go smoothly.

The Shanghai upgrade is the much-anticipated upgrade (and thus a hard fork) to Ethereum following The Merge that completed Ethereum’s transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism. The Shanghai upgrade will allow the validators to finally withdraw their staked ETH which have been stored from as far back as December 2020, which was when the Ethereum consensus layer was deployed. Other anticipated upgrades are focused on increasing transactions speeds and the lowering of gas fees.

The upgrade is expected to retain a bullish momentum for ETH with as volatility points accrued due to ETH staking likely decreases. As a corollary, liquidity staking platforms will immensely benefit from the Shanghai upgrade.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.