Ethereum core developer Team Beiko announced the Shapella (Shanghai / Capella) upgrade is scheduled for February 28. The Shapella network upgrade will be activated on the Sepolia network in era 56832.
Shanghai and Capella are the names of upcoming hard forks of Ethereum. Shanghai is the fork name on the execution client side, and Capella is the upgrade name on the consensus layer client side.
Some Ethereum improvement proposals (EIP) key changes in the execution layer include Coinbase Warm and Beacon push chain withdrawal. Push withdraw will create a validator withdrawal from the beacon chain to the EVM via a new type of “system level” operation. On the other hand, Coinbase’s WARM could be a game changer that could lower network costs for some major network participants called builders.
Coinbase here is the name of the software that developers use to receive new tokens on the network. Each new transaction on the platform must interact with the Coinbase software several times, The first interaction is more because the software needs to “warm up”, then the fee declines as the interaction increases. However, with the introduction of EIP-3651, Coinbase’s software will remain warm from the start, thus requiring lower gas costs to access.
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The main changes in the consensus layer include the full and partial withdrawal of validators and independent states and the blocking of history accumulators, replacing the original single history root.
Partial withdrawal means a validator can withdraw Ether (ETH) rewards of more than 32 Ether and still validate. If they want to withdraw completely, the validator can exit completely and take all 32 Ether and rewards and stop doing their work.
Future upgrades will allow validators to withdraw staked Ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain to the execution layer. In addition, the upgrade will bring changes to the execution layer and the consensus layer adding new features, making it a key upgrade after the Merger.
Stakers and non-stakers operating nodes must, however, upgrade their nodes to the latest Ethereum client version to take advantage of the Sepolia upgrade. After the deployment of the Sepolia upgrade, the next step is the release of the Shanghai upgrade on the Goerli Ethereum test network, which will start in March.