Key takeaways:
Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade right around the corner: The date is set for April 12, 10:27 pm, at epoch 194048.
This is the biggest development to happen to the largest smart contract platform in the crypto industry since the Ethereum Merge that took place last year.
In the latest news, just a day after the Shanghai Upgrade went live on the third and final Goerli testnet, the final date for the Shanghai Capella Upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet was announced at the #157 Ethereum ACDE (All Core Developers Execution) Call that happened on March 16.
The date for the final execution of the Shanghai Upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet has been pushed back a month to April, thanks to delays during the Sepolia testnet execution but now has been finalized.
The Shapella Upgrade went live on the third and final Goerli testnet early on March 15, Indian Standard Time.
So, What is Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade?
In one of the biggest announcements by Ethereum since the Merge itself back in September 2022, Ethereum developers have finally announced the mainnet release of the Ethereum Shanghai Capella upgrade. The Shanghai-Capella upgrade, also called Shapella, is an upgrade to the network that is aimed mainly to enable ether (ETH) withdrawals from the deposit contract. Ever since the launch of the PoS-based Beacon Chain back in December 2020, those who wanted to become validators on the new Ethereum 2.0 network had to stake 32 ETH or more to the network which was locked for an indefinite period of time. Now finally the upcoming Shanghai upgrade is going to solve that, via an Ethereum Improvement Proposal or EIP-4895, which will allow for unstaking of locked ETH tokens on the proof-of-stake (PoS) Beacon Chain.
On the Ethereum All Core Developers Execution (ACDE) Call on March 16, it was announced that the Shanghai hard fork on the Ethereum mainnet would take place on April 12, 10:27 pm at epoch 194048. This translates to April 13, at 3:57 am IST.
While EIP-4895 is one of the most highlighted features of this upgrade, there are a host of other smaller EIPs that are in line too. These other proposed improvements have been made with the objective to reduce gas fees during periods of high activity to aid Ethereum developers. These EIPs include EIP-3651, which proposes lowering gas costs related to the Maximal Extractable Value payments while accessing their COINBASE address (not the exchange, but the software that enables developers to receive new tokens), EIP-3855, which aims to bring down overall gas costs, and EIP-3860, which aims to cap developer gas costs in select cases among a few others.