This April 12 will go down in Ethereum history as the day the Shanghai update was deployed, the next step after the Merge that took place in September with the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake of the second cryptocurrency on the market.
This update will have several consequences for Ethereum and its users:
- The Shanghai hard fork will implement EIP-4895, which allows validators to withdraw ETH that had been locked since December 2020 to ensure the maintenance of the network during all the upcoming changes. This unlocking could lead to a sudden drop in the price of ETH if all, or a large majority, of users holding ETH locked decide to sell it. It is estimated that around 14% of all ETH is currently locked, which amounts to 16 million tokens and a current value of over $26.000 billion.
- Shanghai also has more EIPs, aimed at reducing gas costs for Ethereum developers. This is directly aimed at increasing the scalability of Ethereum and the entire ecosystem: the lower the transaction fees, the easier it is for developers and users to use Ethereum.
By the way, you can see when this update will arrive by following the countdown from wenmerge
