Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade is Complete, Unlocking $34 Billion of Staked ETH. The Shanghai hard fork, commonly known as “Shapella,” of Ethereum has been completed, allowing withdrawals of Staked ETH.
Keynotes
- Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade is Complete, Unlocking $34 Billion in Staked ETH for withdrawals.
- The upgrade was initiated on the Ethereum blockchain at 22:27 UTC and finalized at about 22:42 UTC.
The Ethereum Shanghai upgrade was successfully executed at 22:27 UTC and completed at approximately 22:42 UTC, permitting withdrawals of staked ETH and effectively completing the network’s years-long shift to proof of stake.
Last September, Ethereum successfully completed its much-anticipated merge event, permanently altering both the creation of ETH and the validation of transactions on the Ethereum network.
With the upgrade, Ethereum moved to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, in which users stake ETH with the network to confirm on-chain transactions and are rewarded for their involvement with newly produced ETH.
Since the launch of ETH staking in 2020, people have deposited over $34.56 billion in ETH with the network.
However, even after the merge, users could not access those funds or the rewards they created. Those funds are only now available for withdrawal, thanks to Shanghai’s implementation. As a result, Ethereum’s migration to a proof-of-stake network has been completed.
The path to Shanghai has been paved with numerous concessions made by Ethereum’s core developers in order to accelerate the release of the update. Stakers who have directly deposited at least 32 ETH with Ethereum can now withdraw their profits or their whole deposit.
According to beaconcha.in, almost half an hour after the Shanghai upgrade was implemented, 285 withdrawals in epoch 194,408 had been processed, totaling approximately 5,413 ETH ($10 million).
Members of the Ethereum community have described the much-anticipated hard fork as a historic milestone. Coinbase praised the community on its faultless achievement and announced that ETH unstaking is now enabled on Coinbase.
Ethereum Cat Herders hosted Shapella Mainnet Watch Party. At the Livestream, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, said that
“We’re in a stage where the hardest and fastest parts of the Ethereum protocol’s transition are basically over. Very significant things still need to be done, but those very significant things can be safely done at a slower pace.”
Buterin said that scaling—making transactions faster and cheaper—will be the next issue that the blockchain tackles after Shanghai.
“If we don’t fix scaling before the next bull run, we know people are going to be stuck paying $500 transactions. If, on the other hand, we don’t have Verkle trees before the next bull run, well, things might suck, but you know, it’s a much smaller problem than, you know, $500 transactions, right?”
Analysts have been debating for months whether the Shanghai upgrade would be a catalyst for a price surge or crash, whether its performance will increase market sentiment, or if stakers will hurry to redeem their ETH and liquidate their holdings.
Featured image: Shutterstock
Caleb is a technical writer at AlteBlock with over 2 years of experience in covering DeFi-related content such as crypto news, exchange reviews, and guides. He is also a Civil engineering graduate who can be found on-site when not writing an article.
