Ethereum [ETH], one of the leading blockchains in the cryptosphere, successfully integrated the Shapella upgrade. The Shanghai upgrade took place on Epoch 194,048 at block height 6209536 at 22:27 UTC.
The upgrade has been the highlight of the Ethereum community since its transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
According to Becaoncha.in, Epoch 194,048 did register some missed slots. According to the live discussions on the official Ethereum YouTube channel, this could be a result of validators missing their MEV upgrades.
Whereas, as per Tim Beiko, an Ethereum developer, the high number of missed slots could be a result of the “large number of BLS changes to process right after the fork”. Beiko also pointed out that this could be because stakers forgot to upgrade.
Nonetheless, the Epoch was finalized. Moreover, withdrawals have already started, with about 3787.15 ETH withdrawals processed. Researcher and coder at Offchain Labs – Terence – is said on Twitter,
“Ethereum proof-of-stake chain has upgraded to Shapella. Withdrawal is now enabled This closes the loop of the original beacon chain design. Validator can deposit -> withdrawal.”
Notably, the price of Ethereum’s token remained unaffected after the upgrade. According to CoinMarketCap, ETH was trading at $1,912 at press time and did not register a significant upswing or downswing. The coin’s market cap was $230 billion and it had a trading volume of over $11 billion.
Read Ethereum’s [ETH] Price Prediction 2023-2024
Ethereum Shapella upgrade’s impact on the price
Notably, the Shapella upgrade is a combination of the Shanghai and Capella upgrade. The Shanghai upgrade takes place on the execution level, while Capella takes place on the consensus level. And its final testing took place on 14 March, 2023, on the Goerli public Testnet.
The upgrade allows users to unstake their ETH for the first time since December 2020. This is about 16% of ETH, about 18 million ETH, will be unlocked for withdrawal.
The unlock of the staked ETH was predicted to lead to major sell-offs by many investors in the market. However, some anticipate the processing of the unstaking request to take weeks or even months because of high demand.
7/ We anticipate that demand for unstaking will be high soon after the upgrade and it may take the protocol weeks to months process unstaking requests.
— Coinbase (@coinbase) March 15, 2023
Moreover, according to some market speculators, the sell-off is expected to come from Kraken, a leading US-based crypto exchange, and Celsius Network, a bankrupt crypto-lending platform.
Kraken has over 1.2 million ETH staked, making it one of the top three stakers in the market, whereas Celsius has about 158,000 ETH staked. The exchange is expected to unstake and withdraw its ETH as it shut down its staking service after coming under the SEC’s scrutiny.
