The Ethereum blockchain’s Sepolia testnet has undergone a successful upgrade that simulates the upcoming Shanghai hard fork expected to take place on mainnet in March.
The “Shapella” upgrade, which combines the names of the upcoming Shanghai and Capella hard forks, was successfully implemented on the testnet on Feb. 28.
Shanghai is the fork’s name on the execution layer client side and Capella is the upgrade name on the consensus layer client side. One of the major changes enables validators to withdraw their staked Ether from the Beacon Chain back to the execution layer.
Validators needed to stake 32 Ether to validate on the Ethereum blockchain. They will now be able to withdraw rewards in excess of 32 ETH and be permitted to keep validating while those who wish to fully withdraw can take all 32 ETH plus rewards and cease validating.
