March 2023 Targeted as the date for Ethereum's Shanghai Fork
On December 8. 2022 at the 151st Ethereum Core Developers Meeting, a tentative deadline has been set for the Shanghai Hard Fork of the Ethereum Chain of March 2023. This upgrade will include the much anticipated EIP 4895, which when implemented will permit the Beacon Chain presently staked Ethereum (stETH) to be finally unlocked for withdrawal.
Even though 'the Merge' took place September 15, 2022 wherein Ethereum moved from a Proof of Work consensus to a Proof of Stake consensus, implementation of the Shanghai upgrade will finally unlock these tokens together with any earned staking rewards from transaction validations. According to the Ethereum Foundation these upgrades were purposefully structured in this fashion 'to simplify and maximize focus' for the successful completion of the transfer to proof of stake.
Additionally within Shanghai, EIP-4844 is to be implemented. This upgrade is designed to introduce proto-danksharding to Ethereum. Specifically, this would introduce the new data-blob transaction mechanism developed by Ethereum in February 2022. It is hoped by developers that this mechanism would contain cheaper data and would improve rollup capacity by approximately 100x. Implementation of EIP-4844 while causing the reduction of transfer fees on layer-2 protocols, on chain Ethereum transaction fees will remain unaffected.
Likewise discussed and decided on December 8, developers agreed to address implementation of EIP 3540, EIP 3670, EIP 4200, EIP 4570, EIP 5450 which are commonly referred to as the EVM Object Format (EOF). What this is designed to accomplish is a major upgrade of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). However, should the EOF prove too complicated to implement before the next scheduled core programmers meeting on January 5, 2023, the EOF upgrades will be pushed back to the Fall of 2023. This is based on their desire not to delay implementation of EIP-4895, which allows the withdrawal of Beacon Chain staked Ethereum.
Now it is time for the developers to begin work on testing the code. In November the Shandong testnet was introduced for this purpose but it has since been deprecated. Accordingly, the developers are looking to introduce a new testnet as early as around December 15-16, 2022.
Presently, the developers are aiming for mainnet shadow forks to commence in mid to late January, 2023.
INFORMATIONAL SOURCES
- Nijkerk, M. Ethereum Developers Target March 2023 for Release of Staked Ether. (Accessed December 8, 2022).
- Sun, Z. Ethereum developers target March 2023 for Shanghai hard fork. (Accessed December 8, 2022).
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