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Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade: Here’s Our Guide to Watch Parties, Blockchain Tools

Various factions of the Ethereum community are planning watch parties to witness the first-ever withdrawals of staked ether, with the blockchain's Shanghai upgrade (aka "Shapella") set for Wednesday at 6:27 p.m. ET (22:27 UTC).

By Margaux Nijkerk, Sage D. Young
Updated Apr 12, 2023, 7:58 p.m. Published Apr 11, 2023, 9:17 p.m.
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(EDITOR'S NOTE: We're live-blogging here.)

Wednesday's highly anticipated Shanghai upgrade on the Ethereum blockchain (referred to as “Shapella” by the diehards) is shaping up to be one of those where-were-you-when moments that happen every so often in crypto. Think along the lines of last September’s “Merge” – when Ethereum flipped from a proof-of-work network to proof-of-stake – or the roughly quadrennial bitcoin halvings.

If none of this means anything to you, it’s sort of the blockchain industry’s equivalent of queuing up in the middle of a pasture with a couple of pieces of cardboard to watch a solar eclipse.

As these things go, various factions of the Ethereum and blockchain communities are planning watch parties, while crypto analysts and blockchain historians are getting bearings on the best tools for monitoring the first-ever withdrawals of staked ether (ETH). (Trust us, it’s a big deal for Ethereum, and for the crypto industry in general.)

The Shanghai upgrade is expected on Wednesday at 22:27 UTC (6:27 p.m. ET) and we’ve compiled a list of helpful resources.

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Watch parties

  • The Ethereum Cat Herders, a decentralized project management that helps with educational resources on the Ethereum blockchain, will be throwing a Shapella Mainnet Watch Party that will be livestreamed on YouTube, so you can watch them react to the upgrade in real time. The livestream starts at 5:45 p.m. ET, and you can watch it here.
  • EthStakers has a Shapella livestream, starting at 6 p.m. ET.
  • Nethermind will be hosting its own livestream at 4:30 p.m. ET on how the Shanghai upgrade might impact the crypto-economic landscape.

Blockchain explorers and other tools

  • Beacon Chain: The open-source Ethereum explorer beaconcha.in is another great resource to see when Shanghai goes live. Look out for epoch 194,048, which is when Shanghai will be triggered and staked ETH withdrawals will be enabled. If you click on that epoch once it is live, you should be able to see how much ETH withdrawals are available in that epoch. Additionally, if you’re looking to see how many withdrawals are being processed on the blockchain, including how much ETH is part of that, you can look at that here.
  • Wenmerge.com: A popular website for the Merge has been repurposed for Shanghai, where there are countdowns and dashboards that will estimate the withdrawal queue for validators looking to exit the Beacon Chain. You can look at these estimates here.
  • Etherscan’s Beacon Chain Smart Contract: For those curious to see how much ETH has been deposited for staking, and whether that will decrease or increase in the hours following Shanghai, you can check the smart contract on Etherscan to see whether that number changes here.

Additional resources

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Ethereum NewsShanghaiShanghai upgradeStaked eth

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