Ethereum Adds 8 Proposals for Shanghai Upgrade

On November 24th, the Ethereum development team announced the inclusion of eight new Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in the upcoming Shanghai upgrade. This upgrade will follow The Merge and transition Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain, to a Proof-of-Stake mechanism.

The new features will be part of the hard fork slated for the latter half of 2023. The Ethereum Foundation’s JavaScript team has shared the details of these proposals.

One of the key features of the Shanghai hard fork will be the unlocking of a significant amount of ETH that has been staked for Ethereum 2.0, which was part of The Merge, including related rewards. Ethereum’s ETH 2.0 staking contract has been open since November 2020. Initially, it was estimated that Shanghai could take between 6 to 12 months to be implemented following The Merge.

Among the approved proposals, EIP-4844 stands out. It focuses on proto-danksharding technology to enhance network throughput and optimize transaction fees on layer-2 rollups, marking a significant improvement in scalability. Additionally, EIP-3540, EIP-3670, EIP-4200, EIP-4750, and EIP-5450 will contribute to upgrading the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

As reported, the Shandong testnet went live on October 18th to facilitate testing for the Shanghai upgrade.

Earlier this month, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin shared the latest updates on the platform’s development roadmap post-The Merge.