Shanghai Upgrade: Ethereum devs target 14 March for Goerli Testnet Upgrade!

Just two days after the Shanghai (also called Shapella, or the Shanghai Capella) Upgrade went live on the second Ethereum testnet, Sepolia – Ethereum developers have finally announced a date for the Goerli testnet upgrade. Goerli is the third and final testnet that will see the execution of the Shanghai Upgrade after which it will go live on the mainnet Ethereum network.

We didn't agree to a mainnet date explicitly, but assuming things go well on Goerli, we'd probably set a date on the next ACDE (Mar 16).

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 2, 2023

Additional read: Shanghai Upgrade Scheduled in April post Goerli Tsetnet

Ethereum core developer and project coordinator, Tim Beiko took to Twitter to announce the date for the Goerli testnet upgrade on 14 March 2023 which was decided at the Ethereum ACDE call or the Ethereum All Core Developer Execution Call that took place on 2 March. His tweet thread also mentions that while the date for the final mainnet Ethereum upgrade hasn’t been finalized explicitly, a date can be expected to be announced on the next Ethereum ACDE which is slated for 16 March, right after the Goerli testnet Shanghai Upgrade goes live.

One of the main reasons why the Shanghai Upgrade is so highly anticipated is because this upgrade will be bringing in the feature to unlock staked ETH tokens to the PoS Beacon Chain deposit contract. This would stakers to withdraw their tokens and rewards earned from approving and adding blocks to the chain for the first time since the launch of the Beacon Chain back in December 2020. Ever since the launch of the Beacon Chain, ETH holders who wanted to contribute to secure the new PoS based Ethereum network had to stake 32 ETH tokens or more to become a validator.

So looks like Goerli testnet is getting upgraded to Shapella

Epoch: 162304
Time: 3/14/2023, 10:25:36 PM UTC

See ya on the other side!

— terence (@terencechain) March 2, 2023

So, according to the announcement by Ethereum developers, the Shanghai Capella Upgrade is expected to go live on the Goerli testnet on 14 March at Epoch 162304. This effectively would happen around 10:25 pm UTC or approximately 4 am on 15 March, Indian Standard Time (IST).

The test on Goerli is thus extremely crucial as it is the last and final check on the largest public Ethereum testnet and before the largest smart contract-capable blockchain network receives the Shanghai Upgrade.

Additionally, the final mainnet Shanghai Upgrade is also being pushed back to the month of April 2023, which is a slight delay from the last estimates from the Ethereum developers, which stated that the Shanghai Upgrade would go live in March 2023. Testnet executions generally run for about a period of two to three weeks so. Shanghai upgrade on Sepolia went live on 28 February and the next one on Goerli testnet is scheduled two weeks later on 14 March. As mentioned earlier, the date for the final mainnet deployment would be decided and announced on 16 March, two days after Goerli on the scheduled Ethereum ACDE meeting.

Read On: Ethereum Price Prediction