Ethereum’s Shanghai Public Testnet will launch at the end of February

Ethereum’s Shanghai Public Testnet will launch at the end of February

The tentative schedule for the Shanghai upgrade is set for March 2023, and Ethereum developers are scaling back and planning to launch their public testnets in early February.

The high-profile upgrade is intended to enable validator withdrawals. This feature is currently missing from the Ethereum network and developers are making it a top priority for the first quarter of 2023. After the planned hard fork, users will be able to access coins staked on the network. It is important to note that these assets in question became briefly inaccessible following the merger in September.

“Developers intend to launch public testnets for the Shanghai/Capella upgrade next month and are tentatively planning for a mainnet launch for the upgrade sometime in March 2023.”

The inclusion of an additional feature set is now off the table. Instead, ETH withdrawals, which are currently being tested on a developer-focused test network, will be prioritized over code changes.

Debate about EOF

In a recent call, developers agreed to remove EOF from the Shanghai upgrade, which will likely ship later. Additionally, all additional Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) from Shanghai have also been rejected in place of the EOF EIPs to ensure that the staked ETH withdrawal schedule is not delayed.

EOF, which stands for EVM Object Format, essentially introduces various changes to Ethereum's code execution environment. However, the developers working on the EOF implementation met twice during the holidays to discuss the EIP specifications. They agreed to remove EIP 6206 due to its complexity and to make the data section in these EIPs mandatory rather than optional to slightly improve the ease of data analysis.

Hot version of EIP-4844

EIP-4844 was also a controversial proposal that aims to introduce a new type of transaction to the network. It accepts “blobs” of data that are stored on the Beacon node for a short period of time and are not permanently engraved on the Ethereum blockchain.

In addition to facilitating an ecosystem-wide move to rollups, EIP-4844 focuses on significantly reducing fees and allowing Ethereum to remain competitive without sacrificing decentralization.

The debate surrounding Ethereum players' ability to withdraw the coins has received significant attention. For certain developers like Péter Szilágyi, EIP-4844 is more important than the deadline and withdrawals. Szilagyi said:

“Withdrawals do absolutely nothing to make Ethereum better. Whereas with 4844 you actually have the capacity to make it better.”

Buterin's take

But for many, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, missing the mark is not an option. When expressing his thoughts on the EOF upgrade, Buterin suggested banning “code introspection,” which essentially refers to the ability to execute code to inspect or examine other code that is also running on the EVM. This is expected to develop more complex contracts based on the characteristics of other contracts.

Therefore, no other features will be introduced instead of allowing withdrawals in Shanghai. The EOF could be paired with EIP-4844 and delivered three or four months later, in the summer.

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