• Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade is a hard fork slated for March 12, 2023.

• Shapella is the joined term for two key improvements coming to the Ethereum network: Shanghai and Capella. These refer to unlocking withdrawals for staked Ethereum on the network at the execution layer and on the consensus layer, respectively.

• The Shanghai fork will implement EIP-4895, which allows validators to withdraw ETH that have been staked since as long ago as December 2020.

• About 14% of all ETH are currently staked, accounting for 16 million tokens and a current value of over $26 billion.

• The Shanghai fork also has several other EIPs, mostly designed to reduce gas costs for Ethereum developers.

• The ordinary staking process involves locking up cryptocurrency in a proof-of-stake network to support blockchain operations and enable transactions, while simultaneously allowing users to accrue staking rewards.

• In the case of Ethereum, an individual user must deposit 32 ETH ($50,900) to the blockchain and activate the validator software to participate in staking.

• As ETH holders often do not have enough funds or technical expertise to run their own validator node — now exceeding 510,000 worldwide — liquid staking protocols, including Lido, Rocket Pool and Frax, remove the barrier to entry by allowing ether holders to participate in staking without having to lock in any tokens.

![At the beginning of 2022, there was a sharp decline in the amount of ETH being staked. The number of stakes, however, has been slowly increasing since that first decline, indicating that people are once again interested in and confident in the Ethereum network. Frax ETH is one significant newcomer to the market for liquid derivatives staking. It has been claiming between 2% and 20% of the market share since the end of October 2022, significantly diversified the LSD market.

](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/-7v3WrMIXB2Ss3frPmgs2.JPG?height=467&width=1549&size=medium)

• Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade is a hard fork slated for March 12, 2023.

• Shapella is the joined term for two key improvements coming to the Ethereum network: Shanghai and Capella. These refer to unlocking withdrawals for staked Ethereum on the network at the execution layer and on the consensus layer, respectively.

• The Shanghai fork will implement EIP-4895, which allows validators to withdraw ETH that have been staked since as long ago as December 2020.

• About 14% of all ETH are currently staked, accounting for 16 million tokens and a current value of over $26 billion.

• The Shanghai fork also has several other EIPs, mostly designed to reduce gas costs for Ethereum developers.

• The ordinary staking process involves locking up cryptocurrency in a proof-of-stake network to support blockchain operations and enable transactions, while simultaneously allowing users to accrue staking rewards.

• In the case of Ethereum, an individual user must deposit 32 ETH ($50,900) to the blockchain and activate the validator software to participate in staking.

• As ETH holders often do not have enough funds or technical expertise to run their own validator node — now exceeding 510,000 worldwide — liquid staking protocols, including Lido, Rocket Pool and Frax, remove the barrier to entry by allowing ether holders to participate in staking without having to lock in any tokens.

![At the beginning of 2022, there was a sharp decline in the amount of ETH being staked. The number of stakes, however, has been slowly increasing since that first decline, indicating that people are once again interested in and confident in the Ethereum network. Frax ETH is one significant newcomer to the market for liquid derivatives staking. It has been claiming between 2% and 20% of the market share since the end of October 2022, significantly diversified the LSD market.

](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/-7v3WrMIXB2Ss3frPmgs2.JPG?height=467&width=1549&size=medium)