Ethereum Foundation announces Shapella network upgrade on Ethereum mainnet

Ethereum's Shapella upgrade brings significant changes to execution and consensus layers and optimizes transaction fees on the network.

The long-awaited Shapella network upgrade will be launched on the Ethereum mainnet on 12 April, officially starting the countdown for the most important upgrade since The Merge in September of 2022.

The Ethereum Foundation announced the final date for the upgrade on a blog post on Tuesday. According to the announcement, the upgrade will take place in epoch 194048, at 22:27:35 UTC on 12 April 2023. This decision was made by the core developers after reaching an official consensus. “After a smooth Goerli transition, client teams have scheduled the Shapella upgrade for mainnet activation. Consensus was quickly reached on an April 12th date during the 157th AllCoreDevs Execution Layer meeting,” reads the post. The Shapella upgrade follows The Merge, which allowed validators to withdraw their stakes from the Beacon Chain back to the execution layer.

It's happening 🎊

Shapella is scheduled on mainnet for epoch 194048, scheduled for 22:27:35 UTC on Apr. 12, 2023 📆

Client releases compatible with the upgrade are listed in the announcement below 👇https://t.co/I0hSv9lnjz

— timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) March 28, 2023

The Shapella upgrade is considered one of the most important updates Ethereum has received, as it brings together changes to several layers of the platform. These changes include the execution layer (Shanghai), consensus layer (Capella) and the Engine API. In addition, the upgrade will also implement EIP-4895, allowing staked ether to be withdrawn for the first time. This update is crucial as it marks the final step for validators on Ethereum's proof-of-stake network to withdraw their stakes. With this update, more than 17 million ETH - representing approximately 15% of the total supply - that were locked into a smart contract on the Beacon Chain can now be withdrawn.

Alongside this major change, Shapella will also be introducing other network enhancements at both the execution and consensus layers, aimed at optimising transaction fees for specific activities. These improvements have been tested on various testnets.

Last week, the Ethereum Foundation also announced that it has doubled the rewards for identifying bugs in the Shapella code. The bug bounty programme offers rewards ranging from $2,000 to $250,000, depending on the severity of the issue.