The Ethereum Foundation team announced another milestone on the road to the Shanghai upgrade, with the Shapella fork on the Zhejiang testnet moving into the final pre-launch sequence, according to a Feb. 10 blog post.
Shapella’s transition includes “many features,” and “the most important for stakers and consensus layers, is to enable withdrawals,” noted the post, adding:
“Full withdrawals will be available for exiting validators, while partial withdrawals will be available for active validator balances that exceed 32 ETH.”
According to the announcement, the validator to participate in the withdrawal must have the execution layer withdrawal credentials 0x01. “If the validator currently has 0x00 BLS withdrawal credentials, he must enter a change operation to 0x01 to enable withdrawal,” the Ethereum team said.
Shapella shows two Ethereum upgrades – “Shanghai” and “Capella” – allowing withdrawals in the execution layer, as well as adding a Beacon chain consensus layer. This move is especially helpful for ETH (ETH) stakers interested in knowing how withdrawals will work, since full withdrawals in the consensus layer require interaction.
Related: Ethereum’s Shanghai fork is coming – but that doesn’t mean investors have to dump their ETH
The Zhejiang test network, launched on February 1, is the first of three testnets simulating Shanghai, which is expected to go live in March, although a specific date has not been released. Testnet Sepolia is scheduled to go through the upgrade on February 28, followed by testnet Goerli. The Ethereum team noted:
“If you are an Ethereum staker, node operator, infrastructure provider, or others, now is the time to get up to speed on the upcoming Shapella upgrade, test your software, and pay attention. From here, every public testnet will be upgraded, and if everything is going according to plan, the mainnet will follow soon.”
The Ethereum roadmap has several updates after Shanghai, known as “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge” and “Splurge”. Ethereum is moving to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus in September 2022, after the Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Gary Gensler suggested that the blockchain’s transition to PoS may bring ETH under the radar of regulators.
Recently, Ethereum co-founder and crypto entrepreneur Joseph Lubin claimed that he believes that Ether will not be classified as a security in the United States. “I think it would, and would have the same effect, as if Uber were made illegal,” Lubin said.