Ethereum developers have reported that the Shanghai hard fork could be activated in March 2023. This should allow users to withdraw funds locked in Ethereum 2.0 staking.
With the September merger of Ethereum, the network switched to a less energy-intensive Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, and Ethereum holders got the opportunity to stake their coins to generate income. However, users still cannot return the blocked assets. By
data Dune Analytics, over 15.5 million ETH are currently locked in Beacon Chain, which is 12.9% of the total Ether.
For several months, the developers have been considering what improvements should be included in the upcoming update called Shanghai. The top priority was a feature that would allow users to withdraw ethers from staking as soon as possible. Due to this, the developers have noted that if any of the improvements included in Shanghai slow down the launch of the patch to March, they will have to be delayed until the next update.
One such feature could be the EVM Object Format (EOF), an update to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), software that allows you to run smart contracts based on this blockchain. The EVM hasn’t been updated in over two years, but despite the urgent need to modernize it, the developers decided to postpone the issue during the Ethereum merge, as this could complicate and slow down the long-awaited event. The ideal scenario for the development of events would be the implementation of EOF in the Shanghai update, the developers noted, but the primary task is to unlock ethers in staking.
Many developers hoped that another improvement would be included in Shanghai: the so-called proto-danksharding. This is a preliminary version of danksharding, a process by which huge amounts of data about rollups will be checked only by sampling small pieces of data. This will greatly simplify and increase the speed of data validation in the second layer solutions for scaling the Ethereum network, such as Optimism and Arbitrum. However, most likely, this improvement will also have to wait.
Due to the collapse of the FTX exchange, companies have become more invested in short Ethereum positions, according to CoinShares. Ethereum experienced a minor outflow of $0.8 million in November, driven by uncertainty over the Shanghai update.
Source: Bits
I am an experienced journalist, writer, and editor with a passion for finance and business news. I have been working in the journalism field for over 6 years, covering a variety of topics from finance to technology. As an author at World Stock Market, I specialize in finance business-related topics.
