The Shapella upgrade of Ethereum, which will allow the unstaking of ETH, has been successfully activated on the Goerli network. The mainnet upgrade is expected next month.
Ethereum is taking more steps forward in its efforts to upgrade the network, as Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced that Goerli had forked. The fork is a necessary step before Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade goes live on the mainnet, bringing with it several improvements. At 10:26 UTC, epoch 162,304 triggered the upgrade, which was then finalized shortly after.
Beiko announced that deposits are undergoing processing, though he notes that several validators haven’t yet upgraded. He adds there is a possible challenge in the form of a lack of incentives. The testnet uses ETH that doesn’t have actual value, which may not attract testnet validators enough.
He feels more optimistic about the mainnet because it’s more likely that users are running those nodes with fewer resources than they are on the mainnet. Beiko previously referred to the fact that the change was the first time that people could submit changes, which could eventually lead to missed blocks/attestations on low-resource nodes.
The long and short of it is that staked ETH withdrawal can now undergo processing on the Goerli testnet. This lays the foundation for the mainnet upgrade, expected sometime next month.
What Is Shapella?
Shapella is the consensus side upgrade of the Shanghai upgrade, one of the most highly anticipated upgrades in the market. It is a portmanteau of Shanghai and Capella, with the former serving as the execution side upgrade.
Capella focuses on the consensus layer, where validators perform their actions, while the execution layer is where the smart contracts exist. They are two sides of a coin and, together, will push Ethereum into the next stage of its existence.
Liquid Staking Benefiting From Ethereum Developments
The Ethereum Shanghai upgrade has dominated headlines in the past few weeks, and it looks like liquid staking solutions are benefiting. The consensus is that liquidation staking solutions like Lido Finance will see a surge as the withdrawal of ETH becomes possible.
The amount of ETH staked on liquid staking solutions recently crossed 7 million. This has pushed the total sum to over $12 billion. All of this has had a strong positive impact on the ETH price.
It’s currently up by over 9% and stands at around $1,699. It also jumped from $1,665 to $1,779 before dropping back down to its current price.
Disclaimer
BeInCrypto has reached out to company or individual involved in the story to get an official statement about the recent developments, but it has yet to hear back.
Source: https://beincrypto.com/ethereum-shapella-upgrade-prepares-mainnet-successful-test/