Ethereum developers chose to prioritize enabling stake withdrawals through the Shanghai upgrade, before implementing Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-4884 related to The Surge.
As reported by Cointelegraph, the next step of the Ethereum roadmap is the Shanghai upgrade, which will enable, among other things, withdrawals for ETH Beacon Chain stakeholders/collectors.
EIP-4884 is also notable and was originally planned to be part of the Shanghai upgrade, introducing proto-dankharding to significantly improve the scalability of Rollup Tier 2 (The Surge) before the major Sharding upgrade is implemented fully at the end of next year. .
But, according to Ethereum Core developer Tim Beiko at the last meeting of Ethereum Core developers on December 8, the final consensus was to focus on Shanghai first to avoid any possible delays if EIP-4844 was not ready in time.
In a post on Twitter, Beiko noted that everyone was on board to “(1) see Shanghai happen quickly, ideally around March and (2) follow up with a fork aimed at EIP-4844.” .
Although EIP-4844 will not be included, the developers have agreed to include a series of EIPs that will fundamentally upgrade the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), including introducing a new EVM contract format, code/data separations and new operating codes.
Beiko noted that since these upgrades, called EVM Object Format (EOF), are relatively easy to pull out of Shanghai, in case the developers are not done working on them when Shanghai is ready to implement , the EOF will simply be withdrawn and sent later.
In addition, a series of previously agreed EIPs will be rolled out alongside Shanghai, the list includes EIP-3651: Warm Coinbase, EIP-3855: PUSH0 Instruction, EIP-3860: Initcode Limit and Counter, and EIP-4895 : Forced withdrawals from Beacon Chain as operations.
So that’s where we landed for Shanghai: Withdrawals, EOF & some EIPs already implemented (PUSH0, Warm COINBASE, Limit/Meter init code) are what we’ll go for. If, by January, we are not meeting the EOF milestones mentioned above, we will take it out of Shanghai and therefore withdraw ASAP
— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) December 8, 2022
So here’s where we got to Shanghai: Withdrawals, EOF, and a few EIPs already implemented (PUSH0, Warm COINBASE, Limit/Meter Code Initcode) are what we’ll choose. If we haven’t reached the aforementioned EOF goals by January, we will remove him from Shanghai so withdrawals can be sent as soon as possible. — timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) December 8, 2022
The EIP-3651: Warm Coinbase in particular will have benefits to reduce costs for the network. Not to be confused with the name of the cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase in this context refers to the name of the software used by builders to obtain new tokens on the network.
Each new transaction on the platform must interact with the Coinbase software several times, however, the first transactions are more expensive because Coinbase basically needs time to warm up.
Also read: Shanghai hard fork will take place in March 2023 on Ethereum
With the new CEN implementation, this will no longer be the case and will therefore reduce transaction costs when builders interact with it.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, Sharding is a multi-stage upgrade designed to significantly increase the “scalability and capacity” of Ethereum by implementing shard chains, which will give the network “greater storage capacity and access to data.
With improved data storage capacity, this will enable Layer 2 solutions to offer significantly lower transaction fees.
After all, the next major network event and the last part of the roadmap is the Sharding upgrade, which is expected to be implemented in 2023 and 2024.
