Shapella in the Rearview Mirror: What’s Next for Ethereum After Major Upgrade?

What's Next for Ethereum After Major Upgrade?

Encryption researcher WhosBlockingy Intern summarized the impact of Shapella’s upgrade on Ethereum, the current status of staking withdrawals, Ethereum’s overall roadmap, and possible next steps based on the content of the Unchained Crypto blog.

Validators initially activated their state using BLS keys, but the PoW chain couldn’t handle it. To address this issue, they were allowed to set an ETH address as a withdrawal address, but this created two new problems: 1) a lot of incoming messages due to credential changes. Solution: limit the changes per block (8-16) to prevent delays. Using the shadow fork testnet, it was found that it could handle 10 times more changes than expected without any problem; 2) withdrawal and correct deduction on the beacon chain (funds won’t be lost). Solution: withdrawals don’t involve traditional user transactions that occupy block space, only appear in the blocks, reducing unexpected issues with smart contracts.

Comparison between expected and actual withdrawals: while some chose complete withdrawals, three factors balanced the data. 1) Shapella went online as expected, with low staking risk, easing the public’s concerns and uncertainty; 2) fast withdrawals are now enabled; 3) fewer validators mean higher returns, which can attract new stakers.

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The impact of withdrawals on decentralization: liquidity staking allows independent stakers to test their ability to run validators and withdraw funds within days, maximizing their limited returns. Consistent penalty measures are also in place to prevent reliance on a single large provider such as AWS while keeping independent stakers consistent. Essentially, this allows independent stakers to explore different platforms and ultimately strengthen Ethereum’s decentralization.

Next steps: EIP-4844 uses rollup and L1 to reduce transaction costs while ensuring security. Although it has been in development for over a year, the focus is on syncing the latest software and resolving discovered errors, with a clearer timeline expected around May or June.

ETH roadmap: 1) proposer-builder separation (PBS) to reduce dependencies on external software such as NBD Boost; 2) single slot finality shortens block time from 15 minutes to 12 seconds; 3) stateless Ethereum runs nodes at lower costs. In short, developers are working hard to improve network efficiency, security, and scalability while minimizing trust assumptions and storage requirements.

Reference: https://twitter.com/whosBlockingy_intern/status/1666057819077083136

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