Shanghai upgrade gets a launch date; ETH stakers heave a sigh of relief

• The Goerli testnet witnessed a dip in participation rates.
• More than 15% of ETH’s total circulation supply was staked at press time.

The highly-anticipated Shanghai upgrade also called Shapella, that would enable the withdrawal of staked Ethereum [ETH] has finally got a mainnet launch date, as decided during the network’s All Core Developers Call.

Much to the relief of stakers, Ethereum developers arrived at the consensus that 12 April will be the date for the hard fork after lead developer Tim Beiko proposed three dates for the month.

Earlier this week, the Shapella upgrade was executed on the Goerli testnet which was the last dress rehearsal before the eventual mainnet launch. Before Goerli, the Sepolia testnet was successfully upgraded to simulate the hard fork.

However, the latest one on Goerli saw a dip in participation rates because validator nodes didn’t upgrade. A possible reason could be due to the less incentive to run a validator node in a testnet environment, as highlighted by Tim Beiko.

Deposits are being processed (https://t.co/CxYtPcGMCp), but it seems like several validators haven't upgraded. Looking into it 👀

One challenge with testnet validators is that given the ETH is worthless, there's less incentive to run a validator/monitor it.

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 14, 2023

Read Ethereum’s [ETH] Price Prediction 2023-2024

Ethereum’s staking ratio increases

As per data from Glassnode, the staking activity showed steady growth. At the time of writing, more than 17.6 million ETH were locked in the network’s smart contracts, an increase of 6% over the past month.

At the same time, the total number of validators on the network reached 560,550, exhibiting a similar 30-day growth trajectory.

However, after witnessing a sharp spike on 25 February, the growth in the number of new ETH staked plunged remarkably. This could be attributed to the delays and uncertainty regarding an official date for the Shapella upgrade. 

Source: Glassnode

According to Staking Rewards, the staking ratio, or the percentage of eligible ETH tokens that were being staked, increased to 15% at the time of writing.

Investors give thumbs-up

With a formal date for the Shanghai Upgrade in sight, the trading activity on the platform picked up significantly. As per Glassnode, the mean transaction volume reached a 3-month high of $8,952.89.

📈 #Ethereum $ETH Mean Transaction Volume (7d MA) just reached a 3-month high of $8,952.89

View metric:https://t.co/yjql48MDkh pic.twitter.com/8hnsm0l6P1

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) March 16, 2023

Investors also gave a thumbs-up to the announcement as bullish sentiments strengthened. As per Coinglass, the number of long positions taken for ETH increased and showed signs of further consolidation. 

Source: Coinglass

At the time of writing, ETH exchanged hands at $1723.98, a jump of 4.3% in the last 24 hours, as per CoinMarketCap.

How many are 1,10,100 ETHs worth today?

However, the path after the upgrade is going to be a bit bumpy. Recently, Coinbase, the biggest crypto exchange in the U.S., said that they expected huge demand for withdrawals after the upgrade and it may take weeks or months to process the requests.