• Ethereum Foundation team announced another milestone on the road to the Shanghai upgrade with the Shapella fork.
• The Shapella transition includes enabling of withdrawals for exited validators and partial withdrawals for active validator balances in excess of 32 ETH.
• Validators must have a 0x01 execution-layer withdrawal credential to participate in withdrawals.
Ethereum’s Milestone Towards Shanghai Upgrade
The Ethereum Foundation team announced another milestone on the road to the Shanghai upgrade, with the Shapella fork on the Zhejiang testnet moving into final pre-launch sequence, according to a blog post on Feb 10.
Shapella Transition Features
The Shapella transition includes many features and most importantly to stakers and consensus layer is enabling of withdrawals. Full withdrawals will be available for exited validators, whereas partial withdrawals will be available for active validator balances in excess of 32 ETH. As per announcement, validators must have a 0x01 execution-layer withdrawal credential to participate in withdrawals. If a validator currently has a 0x00 BLS withdrawal credential, they must sign a change operation to 0x01 to enable withdrawals.
Shapella Upgrades
Shapella refers to two Ethereum upgrades — „Shanghai“ and „Capella“ — allowing withdrawals on the execution layer and enhancing Beacon Chain consensus layer. This is especially helpful for ETH stakers who are interested in understanding how withdraws work since full withdraws on consensus layer require interaction.
Zhejiang Test Network Launch
The Zhejiang test network was launched on Feb 1 as first of three testnets that simulate Shanghai which is expected to be live in March although specific date has not been released yet. The Sepolia testnet is scheduled after Zhejiang which will include several features from Capella before launching Altona network which will simulate complete experience of Shanghai upgrade including all features from both Capella and Shanghai releases prior launch mainnet version of both upgrades.
Conclusion
To conclude, this milestone towards Shanghai upgrade through Shapella fork is an important step forward towards complete version launch by March 2021 while providing ETH stakers opportunity to understand how withdraws work through different testnets leading up it its launch date