Just days after the successful execution of the Shanghai Capella (also referred to as Shapella) Upgrade on the second Ethereum testnet, called Sepolia - Ethereum developers have announced fresh new dates for the rest of the events that are going to happen going forward.

Since Sepolia was the second testnet of the Ethereum network, the next step would be to implement the Shanghai Upgrade hard fork on the Goerli network, which is the third and final testnet that mimics the real Ethereum network. This is done in three layers to ensure that all bugs and errors in code are weeded out before the upgrade is deployed on the Ethereum mainnet.

So, according to the announcement by Ethereum developers, the Goerli testnet is expected to receive the Shanghai Capella Upgrade on 14 March at Epoch 162304. This effectively would happen around 10:25 pm UTC, which translates to approximately 4 am on 15 March, Indian Standard Time (IST).

Read more on: What is Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade?

This is an important announcement as the Shanghai Upgrade is certainly one of the most highly anticipated events that are expected to come out of the largest smart contract capable network in the crypto industry - Ethereum - ever since the Ethereum Merge which went live last year on 15 September. The Shanghai Upgrade will mark Ethereum's complete transition from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) based blockchain to a fully functional Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network.

The main reason why the Shanghai upgrade is so highly anticipated is because it would enable stakers to finally withdraw their tokens and rewards earned from approving and adding blocks to the PoS-based Beacon Chain. Ever since the launch of the PoS-based Beacon Chain back in December 2020, ETH holders who wanted to contribute to securing the new PoS version of Ethereum had to lock up a minimum of 32 ETH or more to become validators.

According to a tweet by Tim Beiko, Ethereum core developer and project coordinator, the final date for the mainnet hasn't been finalized explicitly, and it would be finalized on the next Ethereum ACDE, or the Ethereum All Core Developer Execution Call which is slated for 16 March, right after the Goerli testnet Shanghai Upgrade goes live.

Catch top DeFi News & Updates on Okto Blog!

During the execution layer 156 meeting that took place on 2 March, Ethereum core developers showed a general consensus that Ethereum's main blockchain network would receive the Shapella upgrade within three to four weeks after the Goerli testnet upgrade.

Thus, while earlier indications suggested that the Ethereum mainnet Shanghai Upgrade was expected to happen in the month of March itself, the deadline for the same has now been pushed back to April. So if all things go well in the Sepolia and Goerli testnet execution of the Shanghai Upgrade, we can definitively see the Ethereum mainnet Shanghai Upgrade coming up in about a month!

This move has been welcomed by industry participants and leaders from all across the world. Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder at Okto DeFi App and CoinDCX, India's biggest crypto exchange also had this to say about this development: