Staked ETH withdrawals for validators will open in March

Ethereum developers have dropped plans to implement an improvement proposal dubbed EVM Object Format (EOF) in the Shanghai upgrade in the latest round of discussions.

In a call on Jan. 5th, Ethereum developers agreed to March 2023 as a tentative target for the Shanghai hard fork. The significant code update will allow validators to withdraw staked ETH as opposed to having it locked.

Ethereans were hoping to incorporate an additional set of Improvement Proposals (EIPs), but developers working on EOF testing said that including it would mean pushing the hard-fork by at least a month.

Revamp

EOF will introduce a new contract format on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which supports dApps and smart contract functionality. EOF is set to revamp transactions to differentiate between smart contract code and data, in addition to making the EVM more easily upgradeable in the future.

Eth co-founder Vitalik Buterin was also concerned possible implications if the upgrade were to be rushed.

He said: “In the EVM, it’s much harder to remove things than it is to remove other features. If we’re going to make a new EVM version, that new EVM version should be designed with the idea of being very forward compatible to all kinds of upgrades that we want to do in the future.”

‘Highest priority’

In December, developers reached a consensus that staked ETH withdrawals were the highest priority for the first quarter of 2023. As such, they opted to exclude EOF to stick with the withdrawal timeline.

Developers decided to discuss whether to include EOF with the proto-danksharding upgrade in the coming weeks, which will likely be pushed out about 3-4 months after the Shanghai update.

Meanwhile, investors have been uneasy about their staked Ethereum, and have been questioning the future of the network. Enabling withdrawals would provide relief for ETH validators, who are set to retain control of their assets once the unlock completes. However, the unlock period may bring market turmoil as some Ether may make it to the open market, potentially tanking prices.

At the time of writing, 15.88 million ETH (about $20 billion) was staked on the network, according to data from the Ethereum Foundation.