Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade: Testnet Live for ETH 2.0 Staking Withdrawals
On October 15, Ethereum developers announced the launch of the Shandong testnet, which will facilitate testing for the Shanghai upgrade.
Shanghai is the next major upgrade for Ethereum following The Merge, which transitioned the consensus mechanism from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. While there’s no specific release date yet, developers have indicated that Shanghai could be implemented approximately 6-12 months after The Merge.
ETH 2.0 Staking Contract as of October 18, 2022. Source: Etherscan
Shanghai has garnered significant attention because it will include the EIP-4895 proposal, which will allow those who have staked ETH in the Ethereum 2.0 contract to withdraw their funds as well as staking rewards. The ETH 2.0 staking contract has been open since November 2020 in preparation for The Merge. As of the time of writing, over 14.2 million ETH, worth $19 billion, remains locked in the contract.
Another notable proposal is EIP-4844, which will introduce proto-danksharding to help reduce transaction fees on Layer-2 rollups.
We are happy to announce the launch of an early Pre-Shanghai testnet we are calling "Shandong". 🔥https://t.co/1HpFTPUMOU
— EF JavaScript Team (@EFJavaScript) October 14, 2022
This is an experimental testnet run in cooperation with EF DevOps which activates a set of selected Shanghai-considered EIPs for early client testing.
🧵: https://t.co/VJ4kWxupG3
Meanwhile, EIP-3540 will separate code from data within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), making future changes to the EVM easier to implement.
However, the specific list of EIPs included in the Shanghai upgrade will only be officially confirmed in upcoming Ethereum development team meetings.
