Today, Ethereum programmers decided that the “Shanghai” hard fork’s target delivery date would be in March 2023. This version will add the EIP 4895 code, which will permit withdrawals of staked ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain.
The development of the EVM Object Format (EOF), a group of EIPs that effectively update the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the setting in which Ethereum is able to execute smart contracts, was also agreed upon by developers to be addressed in Shanghai. The EIPs in question are EIP 3540, EIP 3670, EIP 4200, EIP 4570, and EIP 5450.
Developers agreed to postpone EOF until the fall if it appears to be too difficult to implement before the next All Core Developers call in order to avoid delaying staked ETH withdrawals.
The developers also agreed to a second hard fork later in the fall of 2023, which would solve proto-danksharding, commonly known as EIP 4844, another important scaling update. Through sharding, a technique that divides the network into “shards” to enhance its capacity and lower gas prices, EIP 4844 would make Ethereum more scalable.
The two forks will reduce anxiety for those whose ETH (and any earned rewards) are locked in the Beacon Chain staking smart contract and give engineers adequate time to concentrate on each issue.
