According to a developer, the Ethereum Shanghai public testnet will launch at the end of February

Developers of Ethereum want to send the Shanghai upgrade to the public testnet in February. Enabling withdrawals of staked Ether will be given priority in the upgrade, which is scheduled for March (ETH).

The launch of the Shanghai upgrade’s public testnet is anticipated for February by Ethereum developers

Christine Kim, a research associate at the financial services and investment management firm Galaxy Digital, disclosed this. The testnet will go live before the Shanghai upgrade’s mainnet deployment in March, according to Kim’s study report for Galaxy. She participated in the inaugural All Core Developers Call (ACDC) for 2023, during which Ethereum developers made this decision.

Developers reiterated their resolve to attempt and establish public Shanghai testnets in early February, she added.

The research associate at the company with a blockchain and cryptocurrency focus noted that the upgrade will only give priority to making it possible to withdraw staked ETH. On the basis of this, the developers are removing any suggested code modifications that would provably cause the time objective to slip.

According to Kim, the developers made the decision to abandon any Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) associated with EOF as a result. The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) Object Format is referred to as EOF. The Ethereum code execution environment is expected to undergo a number of changes as a result of the upgrade, termed EVM 2.0. Testing of its code is still going on despite its removal from Shanghai.

Similar to this, additional suggested adjustments were also delayed by the developers. These include EIPs 5843 and 5988, which were put forth by developers Jared Wasinger of the Ethereum foundation and Abdelhmaid Bakhta of StarkWare, respectively. It was also decided to postpone plans to implement SSZ, a more recent and updated serialization method for encoding structured data. Etan Kissling, a member of the Ethereum Nimbus (CL) client team, suggested SSZ.

Our Q1 roadmap is out. Come help us build it 🙌https://t.co/Roy64rLSwZ

— ethereum.org (@ethdotorg) January 9, 2023

How will the release of staked ETH affect the market?

Market watchers are worried that the Shanghai upgrade may result in extremely volatile prices hitting the ETH market. The upgrade would make it possible for ETH stakers to withdraw the tokens and rewards they have staked.

Since the PoS Beacon chain launched in 2020, some stakers won’t be able to access their tokens until the Shanghai upgrade. Currently, about $20 billion is invested on about 15 million ETH. These holders of stake might be willing to sell their tokens, which would put sell-side pressure on ETH and lower its price.

Some analysts have also suggested that Shanghai, which is the first significant upgrade since the Merge update, could increase the price of ETH. The Ethereum blockchain was converted from a proof-of-work (PoW) network, which required a lot of energy, to a proof-of-stake network through the Merge update.

Prior to the upgrade, ETH’s price also increased. Optimistic analysts also predict that making staked ETH withdrawals possible will, over time, pull in more participants, including institutions, who will stake ETH in order to gain interest. ETH is currently up 4.73 percent in the last 24 hours, trading at about $1,300.

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