Ethereum’s Upcoming Upgrades: What You Need to Know About Shanghai and EIP-4844

The Tentative Timeline for Ethereum’s Future

During the recent 151st Ethereum Core Developers Meeting held on December 8, core developers shared exciting plans for Ethereum. The Shanghai hard fork is tentatively scheduled for March 2023, followed by the rollout of Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4844 in May or June 2023. Talk about a busy schedule for the Ethereum team!

The Current State of Staked Ether

It’s been quite the journey since the proof-of-stake Merge upgrade completed on September 15, but not all is sunshine and rainbows. The staked Ether (stETH), circulating at about 3.5 million tokens valued at approximately $4.48 billion, is currently locked up tighter than a jar of pickles at a family reunion. Users can only hope to get their funds and the payable staking rewards post-Shanghai upgrade.

What’s New with EIP-4844?

Imagine a world where your transactions are zippier! The EIP-4844 upgrade aims to bring proto-danksharding into play, making transactions faster and potentially slashing costs for layer-2 solutions. By implementing data-blob-transaction prototypes, developers are on the path to enhancing rollups’ capacity by up to 100x. Think of it as a diet for Ethereum’s bloated transaction fees—great news for developers and users alike!

What Are Data Blobs Anyway?

For those scratching their heads, data blobs essentially act as bundles of cheaper data that rollups can utilize. As demonstrated at @EthereumDenver, the initial prototype of this groundbreaking technology has already been tested. It’s like adding a turbocharger to your car; everything goes faster, but you don’t have to deal with the additional fuel costs of the larger engine!

Vitalik Buterin’s Vision for Ethereum

To top it off, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has big dreams for the platform’s future. He envisions Ethereum as a simple base layer where users can confidently stash their assets in a ZK-rollup running a full Ethereum Virtual Machine. But like any great meal, this roadmap needs time to mature, as sharding and data availability sampling require extensive audits and tweaking before we can dig in.