Ethereum’s long-awaited Shanghai upgrade, also known as Shapella, went live after several months of delay.
The upgrade made it possible for users who staked their Ether (ETH) to withdraw their tokens from the Beacon Chain.
- Around 4,000 people watched the upgrade live through the Shapella Mainnet Watch Party.
- Within
the first hour of the upgrade, 12,859 Ether, or 0.07% of the total
Ether staked, were unlocked through 4,333 withdrawals.
- Shanghai
is considered the most significant upgrade on the network since the
Merge in September 2022 and a historic milestone in making Ethereum a
fully functional proof-of-stake (PoS) network.
- At the livestream event, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said their next focus is to make transactions faster and cheaper.
- Crypto exchange Huobi currently holds 30%, or the largest portion, of the total Ether that can be withdrawn.
- 248,043,
or 44%, of active validators are now eligible to request a partial or
full withdrawal since several mechanisms are in effect to prevent an ETH
influx from hitting the market.
- Ether’s
price briefly surpassed the $2,000 level for the first time since
August 2022 after the upgrade, followed by a regression to the $1,900
barrier.
- Ethereum blockchain
completed the Merge upgrade on Sept. 15, 2022, switching from
proof-of-work (PoW) to PoS to reduce the network’s energy consumption by
99.95%.
- In
the PoS model, users pledge their existing coins to secure and validate
transactions by staking them, differing from the PoW model that
requires computers to perform complex algorithms, using massive amounts
of computing power and electricity to confirm transactions and mint new
coins.
- Only two networks are still using the PoW model: Bitcoin and Dogecoin.
