- The “Zhejiang” public release testnet will be followed by the Shanghai testnet.
- This is the first major upgrade since the merge upgrade.
- “Zhejiang” allows the tool to test how it collects and displays ETH withdrawal information.
Ethereum Foundation developer Paritosh Jayanthi has confirmed via a twitter post That the “Zhejiang” public testnet will go live tomorrow (February 1st, 15:00 UTC, 2023). The “Zhejiang” testnet will be followed by the highly anticipated Shanghai and Capella testnets.
Both the Shanghai and Capella testnets are scheduled to be triggered at epoch 1350.
Jayanthi was replying to another post by Barnabas Busa who, apart from saying that the testnet will go live tomorrow, said:
“Shanghai + Capella will launch 6 days later (at 1350 epoch). You will be able to deposit validators, practice BLS changes, and exit without risk.”
In follow-up tweets, Jayanti said:
“This is a great opportunity for all devices to test how they want to collect, display, and use withdrawal information. You could try changing 0x00 credentials to 0x01 and setting a return address. You You can test partial withdrawals and full withdrawals by exiting your validator.”
shanghai upgrade
The Shanghai and Capella upgrade testnets are expected to go live six days after the “Zhejiang” testnet, which will also include all of the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) features such as timestamp-based forking coming with the Shanghai upgrade.
The Shanghai upgrade is designed to allow ETH users to withdraw their Ether tokens and rewards. Ether holders have since been able to stake ETH merge upgrade that was taken ethereum blockchain From Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains. However, pending a new Shanghai upgrade, the funds at stake remain locked.
The Ethereum Foundation is targeting March 2023 for the Shanghai upgrade. After the Shanghai upgrade, Ethereum developers will turn their attention to the EIP-4844 upgrade, scheduled for May or June this year.
The EIP-4844 upgrade aims to increase the scalability of Layer-2 Rollup on Ethereum by more than 100x and reduce transaction fees.