Ethereum developers are targeting April 12 for its long-awaited Shanghai hard fork during the All Core Developers Execution Layer #157 call Thursday.
The Shanghai upgrade marks Ethereum’s complete transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network and will enable staked ETH withdrawals.
Once the date is voted on by developers and confirmed via GitHub, epoch 620,9536, occurring on or around April 12, will be set in stone for the Shanghai upgrade.
This means that Shanghai will be slightly delayed from the developers’ initial target for this month.
When Ethereum switched to a PoS consensus mechanism in September in an event known as the Merge, the network began using validators instead of miners. Validators had to stake 32 ETH in order to approve or add blocks to the blockchain.
Before validators joined Ethereum’s PoS blockchain, they were made aware that their staked ETH and any rewards would remain locked up until Shanghai. Some validators have had their funds locked up since December 2020, when Ethereum’s PoS Beacon Chain went live.
The validators will be able to decide after April 12 what they want to do with their stake.
