Share this article
Ethereum Developers Target March 2023 for Release of Staked Ether
Staked ETH withdrawals are coming in the spring, while "proto-danksharding" will follow in the subsequent hard fork in the fall.
Updated Apr 9, 2024, 11:02 p.m. Published Dec 8, 2022, 3:39 p.m.
Ethereum developers determined on Thursday that the network’s next hard fork, called “Shanghai,” will have a target release time frame of March 2023. This upgrade will include code known as EIP 4895 that will allow Beacon Chain staked ether withdrawals.
Developers also agreed to address the implementation of the "EVM Object Format" (EOF) in Shanghai, which is a collection of EIPs that essentially upgrade the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the environment where Ethereum is able to execute smart contracts. Those Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) are EIP 3540, EIP 3670, EIP 4200, EIP 4570, EIP 5450.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
If EOF seems too complicated to implement by the next All Core Developers call planned for Jan. 5, developers agreed they will push back EOF to the fall, so they don’t delay staked ETH withdrawals.
Developers also agreed to a second hard fork sometime in the fall of 2023 that would address another significant scaling upgrade – proto-danksharding, also known as EIP 4844. EIP 4844 would make Ethereum more scalable through sharding, a method that splits up the network into “shards” as a way to increase its capacity and bring down gas fees.
The two forks will give developers enough time to focus on each issue and alleviate stress for those who have their ETH (and any accrued rewards) locked in the Beacon Chain staking smart contract.
Read more: Anxious Ethereum Stakers Question When They’ll Be Able to Access Funds
What happens next?
Now that the full scope of what will be included in Shanghai is mostly settled, Ethereum developers will go ahead and work on testing the code.
Last month, Ethereum developers launched the Shandong testnet, aimed at resolving any bugs related to some of the EIPs they might have included in Shanghai, but that testnet has now been deprecated. Following Thursday’s call, developers are aiming to launch a new public testnet for Shanghai around Dec.15-16.
Ethereum developers will focus their efforts over the next month on making Shanghai as smooth as possible and will aim to start mainnet shadow forks in mid- to late January.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
ZKsync Lite to Shut Down in 2026 as Matter Labs Moves On
The company framed the move, happening in early 2026, as a planned sunset.
What to know:
- Matter Labs plans to deprecate ZKsync Lite, the first iteration of its Ethereum layer-2 network, the team said in a post on X over the weekend.
- The company framed the move, happening in early 2026, as a planned sunset for an early proof-of-concept that helped validate their zero-knowledge rollup design choices before newer systems went live.
Top Stories
