- Ethereum developers have agreed on April 12 for “Shapella”, the Shanghai upgrade that will mark the completion of Ethereum’s full transition from PoW to PoS, to take place.
- With the arrival of Shapella, withdrawals will be allowed, which will mean that the ETH wagered by the validators since The Merge began can be withdrawn from staking.
Six months have passed since Ethereum began its migration from being a Proof of Work (PoW) to a Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain and it seems that the date for completing this transition has finally been set.
During Execution Layer Developer Call 157, Ethereum developers have agreed that “Shapella”, the Shanghai update that will mark the completion of Ethereum’s full transition from PoW to PoS, will take place on April 12th.
For this date to be fixed, developers must still vote and confirm it through GitHub.
Validator funds will finally be unlocked
When The Merge was announced, the validators understood that the ETH they staked, as well as their rewards, will be locked until Shanghai arrives and some of these assets have been locked since December 2020. That is why this hard fork is one one of the most anticipated moments will allow withdrawals of ETH staked by validators.
As this is a key moment, the Ethereum developers have carried out various tests to test the withdrawals, which have been carried out successfully, although the last hard fork of the testnet in Goerli experienced low participation rates because the validation nodes did not update on time, having a delay of up to 90 minutes.
What caused the delays?
According to Tim Beiko, Ethereum Core Developerthe delay in the deposits could have been due to the fact that several validators did not update their software client before the Goerli fork, this is, in Beiko’s words, because testnet validators have “less incentive” to upgrade.
Deposits are being processed (https://t.co/CxYtPcGMCp), but it seems like several validators haven’t upgraded. Looking into it 👀
One challenge with testnet validators is that given the ETH is worthless, there’s less incentive to run a validator/monitor it.
— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 14, 2023
Despite the delay, the validators were able to produce valid blocks and participation increased over time.so declared Ben Edgington, product lead at Teku, an Ethereum customer a CoinDesk adding that Ethereum developers are not worried about this happening on the mainnet as well.
Shapella is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated updates as it would be the completion of the Ethereum migration and the fully functional implementation of the Etehreum blockchain in PoS.
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