Ethereum Foundation Launches Pre-Shanghai Testnet ‘Shandong’

• Proto-danksharding is a hotly debated improvement expected in Shanghai upgrade.
• It is still unclear which recommendations will be included in Shanghai.

On Friday, the Ethereum Foundation announced the launch of a pre-Shanghai testnet it has dubbed “Shandong.” This testnet will serve as a testing ground for numerous Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Ethereum’s core developers will implement, modify, and eventually narrow down to the select number of updates. That will be included in Shanghai when it goes live.

Following last month’s successfully executed merge event. Ethereum’s core developers are now starting to focus on the network’s next, widely awaited update, named Shanghai.

Multiple Key Features Expected

While the primary developers of Ethereum have already indicated that Shanghai would debut by September 2023 at the latest, they have not yet settled on a definite timeframe. It is still unclear which recommendations will be included in Shanghai. Different camps of core devs have given conflicting opinions on what features are most important to include in the update.

As such, EIP-4895, which would enable people and organizations who hold staked ETH with Ethereum to withdraw it, is expected to be the most significant upgrade introduced in Shanghai. To create fresh ETH, users may now stake their own stashes of the cryptocurrency into the network, thanks to the merge that took place last month. Ethereum that has been staked, or deposited, cannot be touched until the staking period ends.

Proto-danksharding is another hotly debated improvement that some developers are hoping to implement in Shanghai. This is a procedure that would enable rollups, which are tools that offload most of Ethereum’s mainnet transaction traffic, therefore reducing transaction costs and increasing transaction speeds. 

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