by Alex Stokes, an Ethereum developer, said on Wednesday that the network EIP-4895 has gone through an upgrade in preparation for deployment in the planned Shanghai upgrade. The recent upgrade supports the withdrawal of validators from Beacon to the Ethereum Virtual Machine via a new operation led by the system.
New Upgrades Underway
As of now, Ethereum staking is supported by the Beacon chain. The upgrade prepares the chain for Ethereum withdrawal.
The Beacon chain was unveiled on the 1st of December 2020 so it can be used for staking Ethereum. The chain was also brought in to aid the transitioning of the Ethereum network from the old proof-of-work protocol to the proof-of-stake protocol which it is currently on. That was the entire goal of the recently concluded Merge.
Although the Beacon chain can enable Ethereum staking, it cannot perform withdrawal operations for staked Ethereum. The EIP-4895, however, will enable validators to withdraw staked Ethereum from the Beacon chain into the Ethereum Virtual Machine via a new operating system at another level.
Note that the Shanghai Upgrade coming up has some important improvements proposed within it which include EIP-3540, EIP-3670, and EIP-3074. But the EIP-4895 is the important one for investors to have. All the tokens used for the withdrawal are represented as a new block object or better still, an operation.
Importantly in the update, users will now have the opportunity of withdrawing their staked Ethereum tokens without having to pay any gas fee. The limitations placed on the total number of withdrawals that can be made allow low transaction fees, as well as gas fees.
Fed Rates Might Drive Price Lower
It is said that the network’s execution client has to bring in certain extensions which include “withdrawal”, then “withdrawals”, and “withdrawals root”, and bring them into the validation of payloads and processing. If there is a problem with the extension, it would potentially disrupt the transfer of Ethereum from the consensus layer into the execution layer.
It is important to note that developers have not found any problems with backward compatibility. Since the Merge has been completed, developers will now give more attention to the Verge, Surge, Splurge, and Purge aspects.
The price of Ethereum fell after the Merge as it dropped as low as $1,287. What was dominantly responsible for the price plunge was the selloff from whale wallets and other macroeconomic conditions.
At the time of this report, Ethereum sells at $1,326, still lower than its support area. Its price might drop further after the Feds announce a new interest rate.
