Ethereum Dev Team Postpones Shanghai Upgrade to April

After successfully transitioning to the Proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism, Ethereum  (ETH) developers have pushed back the main implementation of the Shanghai hardfork which allows users to have access to their locked Ether. The team has now postponed the launch from March to April 2023. As such, ETH stakers will have to be patient until the launch before they will be allowed to withdraw their holdings.

According to the announcement at the ETH developer’s meeting on March 2, the Shanghai hardfork full launch will occur in about two weeks after the Goerli testnet launch slated for March 14. To get to the final upgrade which will be without errors, the developers planned out different phases of public testing of which Goerli happens to be the final public testnet to deploy the upgrade.

Although an exact date for the mainnet was not given, Tim Beiko, Ethereum core developer and project coordinator, said in a Tweet that an exact date will be fixed at the next developers meeting. He is also positive that everything will go well with the Goerli testnet so as not to delay the main implementation of the Shanghai hard fork.

Undoubtedly, the Shanghai hardfork upgrade is the next big project for the ETH development team since after the merge, as such, the developers are working on code changes and doing everything humanly possible to ensure the implementation experiences no issues as well as setbacks.

Concerns About ETH price post-Shanghai Upgrade

Some market analysts worry that the upgrade could result in price volatility since users will be accessing their locked token in the Beacon chain for the first time in a long while. On the other hand, some analysts say this might not necessarily be the case as the withdrawals will have to endure a so-called queue since only 10% of the total staked ETH can be withdrawn in a month.

Summarily the market price of ETH after the Shanghai upgrade will largely be dependent on the users’ behavior. If stakers continually withdraw from the pool that will mean a bearish run, however, the reverse is the case if the staking percentage continues to grow after the upgrade. 

Since the initiation of Ethereum staking in December 2020,  users have staked over $17 million in ETH on the Beacon Chain. This represents 14.5% of the Ethereum token in circulation.