Developer consensus supports Ethereum withdrawals in upcoming Shanghai upgrade
On September 20th, CryptoSlate published an article about the upcoming Shanghai upgrade, stating that Ethereum withdrawals will likely not be activated. This work was informed by contact with a member of the Ethereum team.
Since then, another member of the Ethereum team has been in touch to dispute the claims made in this article.
Shanghai may or may not include Ethereum withdrawals
Ethereum deposited into a staking contract cannot be withdrawn.To date, total 13.4 million ETH was deposited at a value of $20.9 billion at today’s prices.
Shanghai will include the ability to unlock staked tokens, according to the Ethereum website. However, after the integration, social media is flooded with claims that the upgrade may not activate withdrawals.
CryptoSlate spoke to Micah Zoltu to understand what the communication was about, meaning the final list of Shanghai features has yet to be determined. And the Ethereum website is incorrect.
Since the original publication went public, Zoltu has said his comments have been misunderstood. He clarified his position by stating that “the content of Shanghai is unknown at this time”, adding that his upgrade “may or may not include” a retraction.
Reach consensus among developers
Core Devs Coordinator Trenton Van Epps told CryptoSlate that Shanghai’s feature list is still finalizing.
Moreover, what determines the feature list does not depend on individual or team “opinions or statements.” Rather, it comes down to a “rough consensus” of the group.
“Ethereum protocol governance is not based on the opinions or statements of any particular individual or team. We will rely on broad consensus to decide which features to include in future upgrades.”
Van Epps said withdrawal is being considered, along with various other improvement proposals. And there is general agreement that withdrawal should be added to Shanghai, based on his interpretation of the collective consensus.
September 20th, Ethereum Dev Alex Stokes Updated EIP-4895: Pulling Beacon Chains as a System-Level Operation. This is in preparation for deployment in Shanghai upgrades to support ETH withdrawals.
