Eight Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) have been selected by developers at the Ethereum Foundation to be audited for the Shanghai Update, the next major upgrade after Merge and the transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus, the Ethereum Foundation announced on 24 November.
During a weekly call, the developers decided which features to include in the next hard fork, which will be released in the second half of 2023. According to the Ethereum Foundation JavaScript team on Twitter:
We are pleased to announce that we are launching the pre-Shanghai test number called “Shandong” soon. https://t.co/1HpFTPUMOU
This is an experimental test network run in collaboration with EF DevOps that activates a set of selected EIPs considered in Shanghai for early client testing.
: https://t.co/VJ4kWxupG3
— EF JavaScript Team (@EFJavaScript) October 14, 2022
We are pleased to announce the launch of the first pre-Shanghai testnet we call “Shandong”. https://t.co/1HpFTPUMOU. This is an experimental test network run in collaboration with EF DevOps that activates a select set of EIPs for Shanghai for rapid testing. : https://t.co/VJ4kWxupG3
— EF JavaScript Team (@EFJavaScript) October 14, 2022
One of the main expected features of the Shanghai hard fork is the switching off of ether (ETH) on Beacon Chain, which makes it possible to remove assets with the upgrade, meaning that users who invested ether before the upgrade will be Merge in there to access these. tokens, as well as any other rewards. A previous schedule called for locked ETH to be accessible 6-12 months after the Merge upgrade.
Among the approved proposals is EIP 4844, which focuses on the use of proto-dankharding technology, and is expected to increase network throughput and reduce transaction fees, representing a significant improvement in scalability. Other EIPs are related to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) upgrade, including the EIP 3540, EIP 3670, EIP 4200, EIP 4570, and the EIP 5450.
The Shanghai testnet version, called Shandong, went live on October 18, allowing developers to work on implementations such as the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) object format, one of the latest updates expected by the community because it separates the encoding from the data, which can be beneficial for collectors on chain.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, the Merge upgrade was the first step in this five-part process, which has since been crafted by several Ethereum developers, ecosystem participants, and commentators. The main change in the Merge upgrade is the significant reduction in power consumption, which is expected to reduce Ethereum’s power consumption by 99%.
