What is Coinbase Expecting from Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade?

• The recent tweet by Coinbase shows that it is expecting high demand for Ethereum unstaking alongside its latest upgrade.
• The crypto exchange announced that unstaking requests may take some time, even months, to process.

On March 15, Coinbase, a crypto exchange, noted the upcoming Ethereum (ETH) upgrade and shared what it expects from that. Coinbase added, “Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade is almost here. The upgrade will enable unstaking for the first time since ETH staking was introduced in December 2020.”

Coinbase’s Highlights Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade

As the crypto exchange noted and most crypto community already knows, the Ethereum Merge transitioned the network from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) in September last year. This makes the Ethereum blockchain more secure, energy-efficient, and better for implementing new scaling solutions. But, the users were not yet able to unstake their ETH.

Thus, the upcoming Shanghai and Capella Upgrades, collectively known as “Shapella,” will enable unstaking and give users the flexibility to stake more without their ETH being indefinitely locked up. Also, There’s no need to unstake, the user continues staking the ETH and earning up to 6.0% APY. No action is required, and user assets will be safe and secure during the upgrade, as Coinbase mentioned.

Moreover, “if a user would like to unstake, Coinbase will begin taking unstaking requests about 24 hours after the upgrade completes.” All unstaking requests are processed on-chain. The crypto exchange will pass the unstaked funds and staking rewards to users once released by the Ethereum protocol.

Since the Ethereum protocol controls the unstaking process and Coinbase is simply the conduit, it can’t share an exact waiting period when a user requests to unstake. The crypto exchange “anticipates that demand for unstaking will be high soon after the upgrade and it may take the protocol weeks to months to process unstaking requests.”

On March 17, Coinbase announced the launch of “BuildonBase testnet, a new L2 blockchain incubated by the crypto exchange. It will offer a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way to build decentralized apps, or ‘dapps’.

According to Coinbase, more than 18,000 developers released over 55,000 smart contract deployments on the BuildonBase testnet in its first week. It is a great signal that this is valuable to builders. Coinbase collaborated with Zora on the “Base, Introduced” NFT. With 485,000 mints in the first week, ‘Base, Introduced’ is the largest open edition ever, Coinbase added.

Coinbase’s Paul Grewal said that Coinbase may relist the XRP token. In a YouTube channel, he said there are several legal uncertainties to give a definite answer on relisting. Grewal commented on the state of the litigation and said Ripple’s defense team had done well in challenging the SEC’s argument. He also added “A masterful job of pushing the SEC and raising serious questions about the SEC’s entire theory that undergirds that case.”

Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.

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