Ethereum developers confirmed that the Shanghai hard fork, which will allow users to access staked ETH, will be held in March next year.
At a meeting on December 8, Ethereum developers decided the Shanghai update would take place in March 2023. The update’s main focus is on unlocking staked ETH.
Rumors about the inability to unlock funds sent to ETH staking before 2024 alarmed the crypto community. Ethereum developers then deployed a testnet to speed up the process and prepare the blockchain network for the Shanghai update.
According to Tim Beiko, Ethereum Core Developer, the team will concentrate specifically on the ability of PoS validators to access their ETH in preparation for the Shanghai hard fork. And, to avoid any potential delays, the rest of the planned updates will be launched afterward.
For example, the hard fork is scheduled to run without the EIP-4844 update, designed to reduce transaction fees in Ethereum Layer 2 protocols and improve network scalability. Beiko says this update will come out in the summer of 2023 at best.
The Ethereum network successfully switched to PoS in September 2022 but faced centralization issues. Therefore, The Scourge phase was added to Ethereum’s technical roadmap, which aims to achieve maximum decentralization of the blockchain network by making it more resistant to censorship.
