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Margaux Nijkerk reports on blockchain protocols with a focus on the Ethereum ecosystem. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a very small amount of ETH and other altcoins.
Join the most important conversation in crypto and Web3 taking place in Austin, Texas, April 26-28.
Ethereum developers agreed on Feb. 28 as the target date for pushing the Sepolia test network (testnet) through the Shanghai upgrade, the blockchain’s big upcoming move to allow withdrawals of staked ether (ETH).
Sepolia, a closed testnet for the Ethereum developers only, is the second such network to undergo the upgrade. Earlier this week, the Zhejiang testnet ran its own successful simulation of staked ETH withdrawals. There’s one more test network set to get the upgrade, and then the main Ethereum blockchain is expected to undergo the Shanghai hard fork next month.
The Sepolia testnet is closed to developers who run validators on the network. By contrast, Zhejiang is a public testnet, meaning that it was open to anyone, including staking providers, who wanted to practice the release of staked ETH.
After Sepolia goes through its own round of testing, Goerli will be the final testnet to get the Shanghai upgrade. Goerli will be the most anticipated test, given that it is the largest public Ethereum testnet, representing the last chance for staking providers to ensure that staked ETH withdrawals work before Shanghai goes live on the mainnet.
Barnabas Busa, a DevOps engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, told CoinDesk that the difference between the three tests comes down to “the number of visitors participating and network load.”
Shanghai will be the first hard fork for Ethereum since it went through the Merge in September, which switched out its old energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) model for a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Under PoS, ETH is “staked” on the blockchain as a mechanism for helping to validate and secure transactions.
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Margaux Nijkerk reports on blockchain protocols with a focus on the Ethereum ecosystem. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a very small amount of ETH and other altcoins.
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Margaux Nijkerk reports on blockchain protocols with a focus on the Ethereum ecosystem. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a very small amount of ETH and other altcoins.
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The Ethereum network will randomly select a block between 6:00 UTC on February 28th to 6:00 UTC on March 1st to initiate the Sepolia Testnet’s Shanghai Hard Fork, Ethereum’s developers announced today.
The hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain’s Sepolia Testnet will introduce the EIP1559 (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) which is designed to regulate ETH supply and help counter transaction fees. This proposal is in its third stage before actual implementation on Ethereum’s mainnet.
Although EIP1559 could not be tested out on the Ethereum mainnet, it was simulated on the Ethereum Sepolia Testnet for the upcoming fork. The experiment was successful and witnessed a seven day period of governance and discussion. The simulation of EIP1559 concluded with 99% consensus for the proposal.
The upcoming Shanghai hard fork on the Ethereum Sepolia Testnet is expected to have minor upgrades and scalability optimization based on the consensus from the previous EIP1559 experiment.
The Shanghai hard fork is an important test for Ethereum, particularly with the upcoming transition to Ethereum 2.0. It will allow Ethereum developers to test features that couldn’t be tested on Ethereum’s mainnet and provides an opportunity to investigate potential problems before deployment on the mainnet.
With the Ethereum mainnet hard forks being few and far between, the ability to test potential improvements on the testnet will be a great asset, both for developers and all Ethereum users. This hard fork provides much-needed progress and is an important step forward in the development of a more scalable and effective Ethereum system.
