Users can withdraw their staked Ether, and any related prizes as the updates are live.
The meeting
The 151st Ethereum Core Developers Meeting (1) took place on December 8, and discussions revealed that core programmers had set a possible timeframe of March 2023 for Ethereum's Shanghai hard fork. Additionally, programmers plan to roll out the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4844 update, bringing proto-danksharding to the network in May or June 2023.
At @EthereumDenver we hacked together a full data-blob-transaction prototype! (a.k.a. mini-danksharding)
— proto.eth (@protolambda) February 20, 2022
Data blobs are the first milestone towards full ethereum sharding, enabling rollups like @optimismPBC to grow 100x in capacity.
Here's a tweet thread about the prototype 🧵
Although the eagerly awaited proof-of-stake Merge update was completed on September 15, staked Ether (stETH) is still locked on the Ethereum Beacon Chain (2). With around 3.5 million stETH ($4.48 billion) in circulation, the decentralized financial protocol Lido developed the token. Following the Shanghai, users of stETH may withdraw their money and any appropriate stake awards for verifying network transactions after the update. According to the Ethereum Foundation, this organizational strategy was used to "simplify and optimize attention on a smooth transition to proof-of-stake" throughout the upgrades.
Ether's Goals
The EIP-4844 update is intended to deploy a new data-blob-transaction prototype created by developers on February 21, 2022, following the hard fork. Optimistic Rollups, a layer-2 technology, allows Ethereum processing and network storage to be moved off-chain, increasing scalability by 10x to 100x. The capacity of rollups is expected to increase by up to 100x with the introduction of big portable bundles that may hold cheaper data in Ethereum transactions. The change will, however, reduce the transaction costs for layer-2 solutions, but it won't impact Ethereum gas costs.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, stated last December that his ultimate goal (3) was for the blockchain to function as a simple base layer, with users "fully comfortable storing their assets in a ZK [zero knowledge]-rollup running a full EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine]." Buterin cautioned that sharding and data availability sampling are "complex technologies," Their implementation would require years of audits and improvement.
