ETH Price Shoots to $2,000 As Developers Successfully Implement the Shanghai Hardfork
On Wednesday, April 12, the Ethereum developers successfully implemented the much-awaited Shanghai hardfork on the Ethereum mainnet thereby allow ETH validators to withdraw all their staked Ethereum.
Ethereum allowed users to stake their ETH holdings right since the launch of Beacon Chain and before the Merge event when the Ethereum blockchain transitioned from a Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake platform. However, all this time, users who staked their ETH continued to earns staking rewards but were not allowed to withdraw.
The Shanghai hardfork, also popular as the Shapella upgrade, allows users to withdraw their staked ETH either partially or entirely. Almost 30 minutes after Ethereum lead developer Tim Beiko confirmed that the upgrade is now “official”, withdrawals were available on the Ethereum network.
There are a total of 18 million Ethereum (ETH) worth a staggering $36 billion staked on the network. Note that not all staked ETH coins are available for withdrawal at a single time as developers have put a limit on the amount that can be withdrawn.
Half an hour later after the upgrade, nearly 285 withdrawals in epoch 194,408 were processed for about 5,413 ETH ($10 million worth). Over the next five days nearly 1.2 million Ether (ETH) spoken worth $2.3 billion shall be available for withdrawal.
With the implementation of the Shanghai hardfork, the Ethereum blockchain has shown good stability in the performance. Despite the withdrawals kicking in, the ETH price has shot above $2,000 for the first time in over ten months. With this, the 2023 gains for Ethereum (ETH) are now at more than 49%.
Speaking on the livestream during the Shapella upgrade, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said: “we're in a stage where the hardest and fastest parts of the Ethereum protocol's transition are basically over. Very significant things still need to be done, but those very significant things can be safely done at a slower pace”.
Buterin said that the next issue that Ethereum developers need to tackle will be scaling i.e. making transactions faster and cheaper. This was precisely the purpose behind the transition of Ethereum network from PoW to PoS.
The Ethereum co-founder added: "If we don't fix scaling before the next bull run, we know people are going to be stuck paying $500 transactions. If, on the other hand, we don't have Verkle Trees before the next bull run, well, things might suck, but you know, it's a much smaller problem than, you know, $500 transactions, right?”