Ethereum developers target March 2023 for Shanghai hard fork

According to a discussion at the 151st Ethereum Core Developers Meeting on Dec. 8, core programmers have set a tentative deadline of March 2023 for Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork. In addition, developers will aim for May or June 2023 to launch the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4844 upgrade that will introduce proto-danksharding to the network. 

Although the much-anticipated proof-of-stake Merge upgrade was completed on Sept. 15, staked Ether (stETH) is currently locked on the Ethereum Beacon Chain. The token is created by decentralized finance protocol Lido, with close to 3.5 million stETH ($4.48 billion) in circulation. After the Shanghai upgrade, stETH users can withdraw their funds along with any applicable staking rewards for validating network transactions. The Ethereum Foundation said that it structured the upgrades in this manner to “simplify and maximize focus on a successful transition to proof-of-stake.”

After the hard fork, the EIP-4844 upgrade is designed to introduce a new data-blob-transaction prototype previously invented by developers on Feb. 21, 2022. Currently, layer-2 technologies such as Optimistic Rollups can move Ethereum computation and network storage off-chain to improve scalability by 10x to 100x. Developers anticipate that introducing large portable bundles that can contain cheaper data in Ethereum transactions can improve the capacity of rollups by up to 100x. However, while the upgrade will lower the transaction fees on layer-2 solutions, it will not affect Ethereum gas fees.

At @EthereumDenver we hacked together a full data-blob-transaction prototype! (a.k.a. mini-danksharding)

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

— proto.eth (@protolambda) February 20, 2022

Last December, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared that his end game was for the blockchain to act 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 also warned that sharding and data availability sampling are “complex technologies” and would take years of audits and refinement to implement.