The Ethereum Foundation team Announced Another milestone on the road to the Shanghai upgrade, with the Shapella hard fork in the Zhejiang testnet moving into final pre-launch sequence, according to a February 10 blog post.
The Shapella transition includes “many features” and “the most important thing for the participants and the consensus layer is the enablement of withdrawals,” the post notes, adding that:
“Full withdrawals will be available for validators who have exited, while partial withdrawals will be available for active validator balances above 32 ETH.”
According to the announcement, validators to participate in withdrawals must have a 0x01 execution layer withdrawal token. “If a validator currently has a 0x00 BLS withdrawal token, they must sign a change operation to 0x01 to enable withdrawals,” the Ethereum team notes.
Shapella refers to two Ethereum upgrades, “Shanghai” and “Capella”, which allow for withdrawals at the execution layer, as well as improving the Beacon chain consensus layer. The move is especially useful for ETH (ETH) participants interested in understanding how withdrawals will work, since full withdrawals at the consensus layer require interaction.
Related: Ethereum’s Shanghai Fork Is Coming, But That Doesn’t Mean Investors Should Ditch ETH
The Zhejiang testnet, which launched on February 1, is the first of three testnets simulating Shanghai, and is expected to go live in March, though no specific date has been released. The Sepolia testnet is scheduled to go through the upgrade on February 28, followed by the Goerli testnet. The Ethereum team noted:
“Whether you’re an Ethereum participant, node operator, infrastructure provider, or anyone else, now is the time to catch up on the next Shapella update, test your software, and pay attention. From here, it will be updated every public testnet, and if all goes to plan, mainnet will soon follow.”
The Ethereum roadmap has several updates after Shanghai, known as “Surge”, “Verge”, “Purge”, and “Splurge”. Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus in September 2022, after United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler suggested that the transition from blockchain to PoS could have put to ETH under the radar of regulators.
Recently, Ethereum co-founder and crypto-entrepreneur Joseph Lubin stated that he was certain that Ether would not be classified as a security in the United States. “I think it’s just as likely and would have the same impact as if Uber were illegal,” Lubin said.
