A little over a month ago, the Ethereum network experienced a major evolution. Indeed, it finalized its transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake via The Merge. From now on, the developers are preparing for the next evolutions by planning the Shanghai hard fork.
Shanghai: the next big ethereum update
On September 15th, the Ethereum network has definitely switched to Proof of Stake. Thus, this transition was made via the merging of the mainnet and the beacon chain. Although it brings few improvements in terms of performance, The Merge paves the way for various developments to come.
Barely a month after the deployment of The Merge, developers are now working on the next update to Ethereum. This next update will come in the form of the Shanghai hard fork.
Thus, on October 14, the developers announced the launch of Shandong, a pre-testnet for the Shanghai hard fork. Therefore, developers and users can now test the different evolutions brought by this hard fork via this new testnet.
Hard fork shanghai: a lot of updates
For each hard fork, the changes made are presented in the form of EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal).
Thus, the Shandong testnet includes 6 different EIPs, namely:
- EIP-3540: EVM Object Format (EOF) v1 ;
- EIP-3651: Warm COINBASE ;
- EIP-3670: EOF – Code Validation ;
- EIP-3855: PUSH0 instruction ;
- EIP-3860: Limit and meter initcode ;
- EIP-4895: Beacon chain push withdrawals as operations.
- Among these EIPs, two are particularly expected by the community.
Eip-3540: evm object format
First, we find the EIP-3540. This one is presented by its creators, Alex Beregszaszi, Paweł Bylica and Andrei Maiboroda as follows:
“EOF is an extensible, versioned container format for EVM bytecode with a single validation at deployment time.”
In other less technical terms, this EIP introduces a new object format for EVM. It separates code and data to make processing more efficient.
In particular, this EIP will facilitate code validation in the case of second layer solutions.
Eip-4895: beacon chain push withdrawals as operations
In a second step, the Shanghai update introduces the EIP-4895. This is one of the most anticipated EIPs in the community. Developed by Alex Stokes and Danny Ryan, this EIP aims to “support validator withdrawals from the beacon chain to the EVM via a new type of operation”.
As you may have guessed, this EIP will introduce the possibility to withdraw ETH staked on the beacon chain. Indeed, since its launch in December 2020, it was not possible to withdraw ETH deposited on the staking module of the beacon chain.
Obviously, more ETH could be added to the Shanghai update. For the moment, the deployment of this hard fork is planned for the beginning of 2023.
It remains to be seen if these deadlines will be met or if the hard fork will be pushed back later in 2023.
At the same time, the developers have to face a major problem. Indeed, since the switch to the Proof of Stake, the validation process is plagued by a phenomenon of censorship. A problem that will have to be solved quickly if Ethereum is not to become a censorship machine.
