Core developers are working towards their goal of launching the shanghai upgrade and enabling staked eth withdrawals on the network by march. the ethereum community and developers have prioritized the ability to withdraw funds from the network, and have taken steps to ensure that this feature is enabled as soon as possible. proto-danksharding, which would have made layer-2 transactions on ethereum substantially cheaper and faster, was scrapped from shanghai in order to focus on eth withdrawals. updates to the ethereum virtual machine, which had not been updated for over two years, were also delayed in order to prioritize eth withdrawals.
Van der wijden, an ethereum core developer, expressed his optimism to decrypt about the upcoming shanghai upgrade. on thursday a successful eth withdrawal shadow fork was deployed, and developers are planning to launch a public shanghai testnet in early february. this public testnet will enable stakers and staking firms to try out and stress test the software prior to launch.
Expected successful implementation of eth withdrawal capability has caused tokens powering staking protocols to increase substantially. lido finance (ldo) has gone up by 34% in the last week, now trading at $2.03, and rocket pool has seen a 24% increase, trading for $27.75. the mainnet shadow fork, which is a full dress rehearsal of the update, is expected to launch in the coming weeks, which may make a march delivery date for shanghai more likely. the feature is now expected to roll out later this year, as the ethereum community and developers have prioritized the ability to withdraw funds from the network.
https://decrypt.co/119201/ethereum-shanghai-upgrade-on-track-march
