- The Zhejiang testnet upgrade was the first of three dress rehearsals for Ethereum’s highly anticipated Shanghai hard fork.
- Shanghai will be Ethereum’s first hard fork since the Merge in September, which officially marked the blockchain’s transition to a proof-of-stake network.
- “Partial and full withdrawals, as well as BLS changes, are included in the execution payload on the Zhejiang testnet,” Barnabas Busa, a DevOps engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, told CoinDesk.
For the first time, an Ethereum test network (testnet) successfully simulated the withdrawals of staked ether (ETH), bringing the second-largest blockchain one step closer to its historic transition to a fully featured proof-of-stake network. The upgrade began at epoch 1350 at 15:00 UTC and ended at 15:13 UTC (10:13 a.m. ET).
According to an explorer website set up to track transactions on the system, the testnet, known as Zhejiang, facilitated the withdrawal simulations early Tuesday after going live last week. The test network is intended to provide developers with a dress rehearsal for withdrawals that will occur on the main Ethereum blockchain following the long-awaited Shanghai upgrade, which is expected next month.
“On the Zhejiang testnet, partial and full withdrawals, as well as BLS changes, are included in the execution payload,” Barnabas Busa, a DevOps engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, told CoinDesk. “We’ve got a successful fork.” Thanks to BLS changes, people can now change their withdrawal credentials to process staked ether withdrawals properly”.
Zhejiang is the first of three testnets to run through a Shanghai simulation. Testnets are blockchain replicas that allow developers and users to test code changes to their applications in a low-stakes environment.
The next testnet upgrade will be to Sepolia in the coming weeks, followed by Goerli.
Shanghai will be Ethereum’s first hard fork since the Merge in September, officially marking the blockchain’s transition to a proof-of-stake network. The switch made Ethereum more energy-efficient than when it used the Bitcoin blockchain’s proof-of-work system. A proof-of-stake network deposits or “stakes” cryptocurrency on the blockchain as a mechanism to help secure transactions.
However, until the Shanghai upgrade occurs, the staking mechanism is one-way – users can put ether in but not out.
For the ecosystem, the upgrade has become a highly anticipated event. Crypto traders are watching Shanghai to see how it will affect the market. Some traders believe that Shanghai will encourage more staking, while others believe ETH will suffer a price drop as stakers rush to withdraw their long-held funds.
