- Ethereum Developers Agree on April 12 for the Long-Awaited Upgrade
- Shanghai Upgrade to Complete Ethereum’s Full Transition to PoS Network
Shanghai Hard Fork Date: Ethereum Developers Agree on April 12th for the Long-Awaited Upgrade
During the All Core Developers Execution Layer #157 call on Thursday, Ethereum developers agreed on a target date of April 12 for the long-awaited Shanghai hard fork. The upgrade, also known as “Shapella,” marks the completion of Ethereum’s full transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network and will allow for staked ETH withdrawals.
Shanghai Hard Fork Date to Complete Ethereum’s Full Transition to PoS Network
With the Shanghai hard fork, Ethereum will complete its full transition to a PoS network. The network switched to a PoS consensus mechanism in September 2021 during the Merge, which introduced validators instead of miners. To become validators, users had to stake 32 ETH to add or approve blocks to the blockchain. Validators were informed that their staked ETH and rewards would be locked up until the Shanghai upgrade. Some validators have had their funds locked up since December 2020 when Ethereum’s PoS Beacon Chain went live.
Confirmed Target Date for Shanghai Upgrade
Once the date is confirmed via GitHub, slot 6209536, expected to occur on or around April 12, will be set in stone for the Shanghai upgrade. It is worth noting that this marks a slight delay from the developers’ initial target for this month. After the upgrade, validators will be able to decide what they want to do with their stake, and staked ETH withdrawals will be possible.
Tests for Staked ETH Withdrawals
To ensure that staked ETH withdrawals would function properly, Ethereum developers conducted multiple tests since the Merge. All three tests on Ethereum’s testnets ran smoothly, but the last testnet hard fork on Goerli experienced low participation rates due to nodes not upgrading in time. While staked ETH withdrawals were processed on the testnet, blocks were not completed until about 90 minutes after the fork went live.