The Ethereum Foundation has officially announced the activation of the Shapella network upgrades on the Ethereum network, scheduled for April 12th at epoch 194048, at 22:27:35 UTC.
The upgrade will allow validators to withdraw their stake from the Beacon Chain back to the execution layer and introduce new functionality to both the execution and consensus layers.
Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade & Bug Bounty
Prior to the upgrade, the ETH Bug Bounty rewards have been doubled for Shapella vulnerabilities until April 5th, encouraging stakeholders to report any potential issues they may discover, as per the announcement.
The upgrade combines changes to the execution layer (Shanghai), consensus layer (Capella), and the Engine API, introducing various improvements such as full and partial withdrawals for validators and independent state and block historical accumulators.
Client teams expect SELFDESTRUCT semantics to change in future network upgrades, but the opcode’s behavior remains unchanged in Shanghai.
Changes to the Engine API are specified in the shanghai.md file of the execution-APIs repository and the full set of Shanghai changes can now be viewed in the ETH Execution Layer Specification (EELS), a new Python reference implementation for the execution layer.
The following client releases support Shanghai & Capella on the Ethereum mainnet: Besu v23.1.2, Erigon v2.41.0 v2.42.0, go-ethereum (geth) v1.11.5, and Nethermind v1.17.3. Previous Shapella releases only supported testnet deployments and are incompatible with the mainnet upgrade.
According to the announcement post, stakers and node operators are advised to read the Withdrawals FAQ to prepare for Capella and to update their node to the latest version of their ETH client listed in the table provided. The table lists the client releases that support Shanghai and Capella on the Ethereum mainnet.
As an Ethereum user, Ether holder, or non-staking node operator, there is no immediate action needed unless informed by your exchange or wallet provider. However, those running their own Ethereum node should update to the latest client version listed to be compatible with the Mainnet upgrade.
However, Ethereum stakeholders are encouraged to keep an eye out for any updates or announcements regarding the Shapella network upgrade to ensure a smooth transition and avoid any compatibility issues.
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