Ethereum core developers have finally set the date for the Shanghai upgrade.
During the All Core Developers Execution Layer #157 conference call on March 16th, Ethereum core developers determined April 12th as the target date for the long-awaited Shanghai upgrade.
The mainnet upgrade for Shanghai includes five Ethereum Improvement Proposals, with EIP-4985 being the most important. This proposal will allow customers to withdraw staked Ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain.
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It is worth noting that this upgrade is Ethereum's final step in its shift from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus model.
While the upgrade was initially expected to be launched in March, it was later postponed to early April. However, the set date of April 12th at 10:27:35 pm UTC must be verified by developers on GitHub for the date to become official.
As many experts claim that the upgrade can cause a massive sell-off, Ethereum core developers have implemented safeguards to avoid this situation. Stakers will only be allowed to withdraw acquired ETH. The new upgrade will allow validators to either withdraw excess rewards of 32 ETH and continue validating or take 32 ETH and other bonuses and stop validating.
Data from Etherscan indicates that the Ethereum PoS smart contract has accumulated over 17.7 million ETH, valued at around $30 billion at the time of writing.
On September 15th, 2022, Ethereum took its first steps toward proof-of-stake with the "Merge." During this upgrade, Ethereum replaced miners with validators and established ETH staking as an essential aspect of the network.
Since the Merge, Ethereum core developers completed Zhejiang, Sepolia, and Goerli testnets. It is worth noting that the roadmap for Ethereum includes multiple updates following Shanghai, such as "Surge," "Verge," "Purge," and "Splurge."
