Ethereum developers, in a call, revealed their plans to launch a public Shanghai test net for their upcoming upgrade. They said the upcoming Shanghai upgrade would allow ethers staked in the Beacon Chain since December 2020 to be available for withdrawals.
In the call, which was held on the 5th of January 2023, the Ethereum developers revealed their decision to make March 2023 the date to release the Shanghai hard fork. So a month before the Ethereum fork date, the developers will make a public test network open to the public in February.
Plans about integrating Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) dubbed EVM Object Format (EOF) was discarded during the call. The Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) were proposed to improve the blockchain's EVM programming environment. However, the idea was scratched as there are concerns that it might delay the launch of the Shanghai hard fork.
The founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, said that the developers should not be in a hurry to implement the EVM Object Format (EOF). "In the EVM, it’s much harder to remove things than it is to remove other features. If we’re going to make a new EVM version, that new EVM version should be designed with the idea of being very forward compatible to all kinds of upgrades that we want to do in the future," Vitalik Buterin said.
The Upcoming Upgrade Will Bring Major Improvements
The upcoming upgrade on Ethereum will bring major improvements in withdrawals and transactions to the network. Christine Kim, a research associate at Galaxy who was also on the call, said that Shanghai's current developer test net has progressed to block 4,000. She also mentioned in the blog post that all Execution Layer (EL) and Consensus Layer (CL) client combinations are currently being used in
"The current developer test network for Shanghai, launched just before Christmas, has already progressed to block 4,000. All EL and CL client combinations are currently running on this testnet. A few client combinations, such as Teku-Erigon and Lighthouse-Erigon are experiencing issues. Busa mentioned that developers are working on launching a new developer testnet as soon as possible with the help of client teams," the blog post read.
The upcoming upgrade, which will go live in March, will solve the problems experienced in the current developer test network. With many advantages coming from the upgrade, it has generated a lot of excitement within the Ethereum community as it will change many things.
The upgrade could mean that staking will be better at the Ethereum network, and people can now stake Ethereum without worrying about being unable to withdraw. This could impact the number of people that use Ethereum staking.
According to data by Staking Rewards, Ethereum currently has the lowest staking ratio with just 13.79% of all ETH tokens staked. Compared to other smaller blockchains, Ethereum has recorded the lowest recently.
Other Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains such as Cardano and Solana have seen an increase in users more than Ethereum at 71.8% and 71.4%, respectively. In comparison, they are just about 13.79% of all ETH tokens staked.