Ethereum Core Developers Discuss Shanghai Upgrade Public Testnet Release Schedule and Cancun Upgrade

Ethereum core developers discussed the timeline for the Shanghai upgrade public testnet launch and the progress of the Cancun upgrade (the upgrade after the Shanghai upgrade) focused on EIP-4844 in conference call #154 on February 2. The Ethereum public withdrawal testnet Zhejiang has been launched on February 1st. Anyone can request the testnet ETH from the faucet and start their own validators on the network. The Zhejiang testnet is currently supported by 61,000 active validators, of which Most are run by the Ethereum Foundation. Barnabus Busa, a DevOps engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, mentioned on the call that the testnet was struggling to process new pledged ETH deposits due to a possible configuration issue with the CL software client. Assuming this issue is resolved within the next few days, the developers plan to activate the Shanghai upgrade on the Zhejiang testnet next Tuesday (February 7). If the Shanghai upgrade goes smoothly on the Zhejiang testnet, the developers will decide on an activation date during the ACDC conference call on February 9 to release the upgrade on the Sepolia testnet. After the Sepolia testnet upgrade (that is, sometime in mid-February), the developers plan to release the Shanghai upgrade on the Ethereum Goerli testnet at the end of February or early March. After the transition is successful, it will switch to the mainnet. Ethereum core developers also spent most of their time discussing issues related to EIP-4844, including Gas pricing, transaction validity rules, transaction pool testing, and blob/block coupling. Jacek Glen, senior software engineer at imapp, presented his findings of benchmarking the execution of new EIP-4844-related operations through different Ethereum software clients. There are some notable differences in the way. The developers agree to continue developing these operations and to re-run the benchmarks in the future.