Ethereum’s Shanghai Public Testnet Launches in February

The tentative schedule for the Shanghai upgrade is March 2023, and Ethereum developers are refocusing and aiming for early February to launch their public testnets. Validator staking withdrawals are the goal of the prominent upgrade. The developers have given this feature, which the Ethereum network currently lacks, the highest priority for the first quarter of 2023. As a result, users will have access to coins staked on the network after the anticipated hard fork. It is significant to note that these aforementioned assets briefly became inaccessible due to the Merge in September.

"Developers aim to launch public testnets for the Shanghai/Capella upgrade next month and tentatively schedule a mainnet launch for the upgrade sometime in March 2023."

In the meantime, adding a new feature set is no longer an option. Code changes are not given priority; instead, ETH withdrawals, which are currently being tested on a test network for developers, are.

The developers recently agreed to take EOF out of the Shanghai upgrade and ship it later during a conference call. To prevent the timeline for staked ETH withdrawals from being delayed, any additional Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) from Shanghai in place of the EOF EIPs were also rejected. The code execution environment of Ethereum is essentially modified by EOF, which stands for EVM Object Format. However, during the holidays, the programmers working on the EOF implementation met twice to discuss the EIP specifications. To slightly improve the ease of data parsing, they decided to remove EIP 6206 due to its complexity and make the data section in these EIPs mandatory rather than optional.

The controversial proposal EIP-4844 seeks to expand the network's transaction types by adding new ones. It accepts “blobs” of data that are only temporarily stored in the beacon node and are not permanently inscribed in the Ethereum blockchain. The EIP-4844 aims to significantly reduce fees, allowing Ethereum to maintain its competitiveness without sacrificing decentralization and facilitating an ecosystem-wide transition to rollups. The issue of Ethereum stakers' ability to withdraw their coins has drawn a lot of discussions. EIP-4844 is more significant to some developers than the deadline and withdrawals, such as Péter Szilágyi. Szilágyi said,

"Withdrawals brings absolutely nothing to make Ethereum better. Whereas with 4844 you actually have the capacity to make it better."

However, for many people, including Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, letting the target slip is not an option. The ability to run code to inspect or examine other code that is also running on the EVM is known as “code introspection,” Buterin suggested banning it in his response to the EOF upgrade. It is anticipated that this will lead to the development of more complex contracts that draw on the traits of other contracts. As a result, there won't be any additional features added in place of allowing withdrawals in Shanghai. Instead, the EOF could be shipped three to four months later, in the summer, along with EIP-4844.