Staked ETH can be withdrawn! Scheduled to launch on the Shanghai testnet by the end of February, Ethereum developers plan to activate the Shanghai upgrade on the mainnet in March.

Ethereum core developers held a conference call on January 5, 2023, to discuss the key upgrade events for the first half of the year on Ethereum: the Shanghai upgrade. The most significant feature of this upgrade plan is the introduction of the ability to withdraw staked ETH.

Ethereum Developers Meeting: Ensuring ETH Withdrawals Are Smooth

During this meeting, it was agreed to delay all code changes related to EOF EVM Object Format to ensure the development for smooth ETH withdrawals is not delayed. Developers have currently set the Shanghai upgrade testnet online for the end of February, with the Shanghai upgrade expected to launch in March.

15.94 Million ETH Staked, 70% Devalued Since Staking

As of January 7, 2023, a total of 15.94 million ETH has entered the Beacon Chain staking Ethereum's consensus layer, utilizing the PoS consensus mechanism.

If calculated based on the market price at the time of staking, 76.4% of the ETH has devalued, which could be a factor in whether to continue staking after the Shanghai upgrade.

Other Meeting Highlights: EOF, EIP-3860, EIP 5988, EIP 5843

EOF EVM Object Format focuses on significant changes to Ethereum's EVM, making it easier to upgrade EVM, parse smart contract code and data, save gas for developers, and simplify the smart contract debugging process and more. However, due to the complexity of these updates, core developers ultimately decided to postpone implementation in the Shanghai upgrade.

EIP 5988, proposed by Abdelhmaid Bakhta, Starkware's lead explorer. He proposed new precompiles to improve the efficiency of running zero-knowledge proofs. His idea is to lower the cost of proofs like Merkle proofs, proposing hash functions more friendly to ZK proofs. However, Dankrad Feist, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, expressed concerns that prematurely introducing such new functions could pose risks to Ethereum.

EIP-3860 limits initcode to a maximum of 49152 and adds 2 additional Gas for every 32-bit chunk to correct some errors.

EIP 5843 is also aimed at improving the EVM, making it more efficient in modular addition, subtraction, and multiplication. However, as the proposer did not attend this meeting, it was not discussed.

More detailed meeting notes