A second Ethereum test network (testnet), known as Sepolia, successfully replicated withdrawals of staked ether (ETH) Monday, bringing the Ethereum blockchain closer to its highly anticipated Shanghai Upgrade.
The Shanghai Upgrade will mark ETH’s complete transition to a fully functional proof-of-stake network, enabling validators to withdraw rewards earned from adding or approving blocks to the blockchain. There is one more test, on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet, that is planned before Shanghai goes live.
Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade Will Impact The Staking Platform
The test on Sepolia was designed to provide developers with another dress rehearsal of the withdrawals similar to those that will happen on the main Ethereum blockchain. Testnets copy a main blockchain, in this case, ETH, and allow developers to test any changes to their applications in a low-stakes environment.
Sepolia is the second of three testnets to run through such a simulation. But unlike the previous testnet upgrade that happened earlier this month on Zhejiang, this was on a closed testnet, meaning that only the ETH core developers run the validators on this testnet. Sepolia is also the smallest of all three testnets in terms of the number of validators participating in it, making it the least important of all three.
The final testnet upgrade will occur in Goerli sometime in the coming weeks. That would be the final dress rehearsal before the main blockchain can process staked ETH withdrawals. Goerli’s testing will also be the most anticipated given that it is the biggest testnet of the three and it mimics the main Ethereum blockchain activity most closely.
If the developers continue to run test upgrades three weeks apart, the next testnet upgrade on Goerli would likely occur around March 21, which could likely push the mainnet Shanghai Upgrade into April. If that were the case, there would be a slight delay versus the target of March that Ethereum developers had initially signaled for the release of staked ETH.
