Ethereum is preparing for its next major update, the Shanghai Update, scheduled for April 12, 2023. This update is crucial after last September's merger and is expected to have a significant impact on the more than 500,000 validators of the network, according to BeaconScan data, as of March.
The Shanghai Update will implement several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that will significantly impact the network, including EIP-4895, EIP-3855, EIP-3860, and EIP-3651.
The EIP-4895 represents the most important development of the Shanghai upgrade. As the upgrade will lift the staking lock, stakers will be able to withdraw their staked ETH and choose more flexible staking mechanisms.
The EIP-3855 will introduce a new instruction called "PUSH0". This instruction pushes zero when called in contract code, which reduces gas charges for developers and decreases storage size, enabling faster network transactions.
EIP-3860 is an extension of EIP-170 that limits the maximum initcode size and facilitates fair initcode billing when interacting with "initcode", thereby reducing transaction fees .
EIP-3651 is a "Warm COINBASE" statement. In order to better support COINBASE payments and make access to COINBASE less expensive.
The most significant change brought about by the Shanghai upgrade is that it will improve liquidity for stakers and validators by allowing them to withdraw their staked ETH. At present, Shapella (Shanghai and Capella updates) is already live on the Goerli test network, allowing users to test the code in advance.
