Ethereum Shapella Upgrade is Now Live: Here is How it is Already Affecting the ETH Price

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The Ethereum Shanghai Capella upgrade, also known as “Shapella,” has successfully completed. This highly anticipated upgrade is a significant milestone for the Ethereum ecosystem and marks the completion of its famous transition to a full proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. With the upgrade, users can withdraw their staked ETH, a crucial feature of the new proof-of-stake system.

Withdrawals After the Upgrade

The Shanghai upgrade was triggered at 22:27 GMT and finalized at about 22:42 GMT. Within half an hour after the upgrade was activated, nearly 285 withdrawals in epoch 194,408 had been processed, for about 5,413 ETH ($10 million worth). As per Coin Metrics, 1.2 million ETH tokens worth over $2.3 billion as of the current price will be available for withdrawals over the next four to five days.

Notably, not all 18 million ETH staked on the network will be available for withdrawal at once, as limits have been kept on this. Ethereum will only permit 1,350 full validators to withdraw their stake each day over the next 18 months. Because each validator stakes 32 ETH, no more than 43,200 ETH—which is $83 million at current prices—can enter the market per day.

Impact on ETH Price

At the time the Shanghai hard fork was triggered, the price of ETH remained largely flat, while about 4000 people tuned into a Shapella Mainnet Watch Party hosted by Ethereum Cat Herders. Yet, with the withdrawal mechanism going live, there could be short-term ETH price fluctuations in the near future. Although the coin has already immediately crossed the $1,900 mark, it is important to note that the full impact of the upgrade on Ether’s price is yet to be seen. 

The Shanghai Upgrade Brings Other Improvements

Apart from enabling withdrawals, the Shanghai upgrade includes other improvements, such as a basis for conditional or cancellable payments, features that will reduce contract size and certain contract risks, and improvements that will lower gas fees for developers. It also introduces a feature that allows validators who previously staked ETH on-chain to withdraw those tokens for the first time.

The next major Ethereum upgrade is titled Cancun, which will feature proto-dank sharding, a feature that aims to improve scalability by improving fees and transaction times. While the Shanghai upgrade has been a major development for Ethereum, very significant things still need to be done, but those significant things can be safely done at a slower pace, as was stated by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.