The Merge marked a significant milestone for the Ethereum network in 2022, with the blockchain platform shifting from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus. That change introduced validators as the new “miners” of the network, with staking ETH becoming a key component in maintaining the network.

While full validators were required to stake 32 ETH to process transactions and add new blocks to the network, the broader ecosystem could stake smaller amounts of ETH to earn a share of rewards — much like an investor that puts capital into interest-bearing accounts.

Those that locked up ETH to become validators have been unable to withdraw their staked holdings from the Beacon Chain. This changes with the Shanghai upgrade, and is a major reason for the increased fanfare around the latest change to the Ethereum network.

The Shanghai upgrade features a handful of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in addition to activating staking withdrawals. Cointelegraph reached out to members of the ConsenSys team, the Ethereum Foundation and analytics firm Nansen to unpack all aspects of the upcoming milestone.

The upcoming changes feature two simultaneous upgrades amalgamated to encompass all facets of the upgrade.

Shanghai refers to changes to Ethereum’s execution layer, mainly enabling staked ETH to be deposited to execution layer wallets. The Shanghai upgrade requires a simultaneous change to the Beacon Chain, which has been dubbed Capella.

Within the Ethereum ecosystem, execution layer upgrades are named after cities that have hosted Devcon events, while consensus layer upgrades are named after stars. Therefore the upcoming upgrade’s technical name is Shapella, combining Shanghai and Capella

As has been highlighted by several analysts and Ethereum developers, Shanghai features five EIPs. EIP-4895 will enable users to withdraw from the Ethereum staking contract, which had previously been locked.

Reward payments will be sent automatically to withdrawal addresses at regular intervals to validators. Users also have the option to exit staking entirely, which will return their entire validator balance.

Validator balances are maxed out at 32 ETH, meaning that balances above this threshold as a result of rewards do not contribute to the principal amount nor increase the weight of a validator on the network.

EIP-3651, EIP-3855, EIP-3860 and EIP-6049 are the other four elements of the network upgrade. Matt Nelson, Hyperledger Besu and Web3 senior product manager at ConsenSys, highlighted the impact of each of these EIPs.

The Ethereum protocol prices gas based on how many units of work a function will require of a computer in the network. Changes to Ethereum’s gas costs often adjust to correct overpriced or underpriced operations that have central processing units doing more or less work than anticipated. Warm coinbase (3651), PUSH0 (3855) and the initcode changes (3860) are part of these corrections, according to Nelson.

EIP-3651 changes the price of accessing the coinbase address of a validator that submits and executes transactions. Validators receive fees to their coinbase address for maintaining the network. As Nelson summarized, EIP-3651 looks to lower the gas cost of accessing a coinbase address so that users that submit transactions can pay the validators directly in specific conditions

Blockchain promises to solve this problem. The technology at the heart of bitcoin and other virtual currencies, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.

With blockchain, we can imagine a world in which contracts are embedded in digital code and stored in transparent, shared databases, where they are protected from deletion, tampering, and revision. In this world every agreement, every process, every task, and every payment would have a digital record and signature that could be identified, validated, stored, and shared. Intermediaries like lawyers, brokers, and bankers might no longer be necessary. Individuals, organizations, machines, and algorithms would freely transact and interact with one another with little friction. This is the immense potential of blockchain.

Indeed, virtually everyone has heard the claim that blockchain will revolutionize business and redefine companies and economies. Although we share the enthusiasm for its potential, we worry about the hype. It’s not just security issues (such as the 2014 collapse of one bitcoin exchange and the more recent hacks of others) that concern us. Our experience studying technological innovation tells us that if there’s to be a blockchain revolution, many barriers—technological, governance, organizational, and even societal—will have to fall. It would be a mistake to rush headlong into blockchain innovation without understanding how it is likely to take hold.

Before jumping into blockchain strategy and investment, let’s reflect on what we know about technology adoption and, in particular, the transformation process typical of other foundational technologies. One of the most relevant examples is distributed computer networking technology, seen in the adoption of TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol), which laid the groundwork for the development of the internet.

Introduced in 1972, TCP/IP first gained traction in a single-use case: as the basis for e-mail among the researchers on ARPAnet, the U.S. Department of Defense precursor to the commercial internet. Before TCP/IP, telecommunications architecture was based on “circuit switching,” in which connections between two parties or machines had to be preestablished and sustained throughout an exchange. To ensure that any two nodes could communicate, telecom service providers and equipment manufacturers had invested billions in building dedicated lines.

TCP/IP turned that model on its head. The new protocol transmitted information by digitizing it and breaking it up into very small packets, each including address information. Once released into the network, the packets could take any route to the recipient. Smart sending and receiving nodes at the network’s edges could disassemble and reassemble the packets and interpret the encoded data. There was no need for dedicated private lines or massive infrastructure. TCP/IP created an open, shared public network without any central authority or party responsible for its maintenance and improvement.

Traditional telecommunications and computing sectors looked on TCP/IP with skepticism. Few imagined that robust data, messaging, voice, and video connections could be established on the new architecture or that the associated system could be secure and scale up. But during the late 1980s and 1990s, a growing number of firms, such as Sun, NeXT, Hewlett-Packard, and Silicon Graphics, used TCP/IP, in part to create localized private networks within organizations. To do so, they developed building blocks and tools that broadened its use beyond e-mail, gradually replacing more-traditional local network technologies and standards. As organizations adopted these building blocks and tools, they saw dramatic gains in productivity.

TCP/IP burst into broad public use with the advent of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. New technology companies quickly emerged to provide the “plumbing”—the hardware, software, and services needed to connect to the now-public network and exchange information. Netscape commercialized browsers, web servers, and other tools and components that aided the development and adoption of internet services and applications. Sun drove the development of Java, the application-programming language. As information on the web grew exponentially, Infoseek, Excite, AltaVista, and Yahoo were born to guide users around it.

Once this basic infrastructure gained critical mass, a new generation of companies took advantage of low-cost connectivity by creating internet services that were compelling substitutes for existing businesses. CNET moved news online. Amazon offered more books for sale than any bookshop. Priceline and Expedia made it easier to buy airline tickets and brought unprecedented transparency to the process. The ability of these newcomers to get extensive reach at relatively low cost put significant pressure on traditional businesses like newspapers and brick-and-mortar retailers.

Relying on broad internet connectivity, the next wave of companies created novel, transformative applications that fundamentally changed the way businesses created and captured value. These companies were built on a new peer-to-peer architecture and generated value by coordinating distributed networks of users. Think of how eBay changed online retail through auctions, Napster changed the music industry, Skype changed telecommunications, and Google, which exploited user-generated links to provide more relevant results, changed web search.