• Ethereum successfully implemented the Shapella (Shanghai and Capella) upgrade on mainnet on Wednesday.
• ETH has had a surprising reaction to the historical upgrade, with 73,214 ETH withdrawn so far.
• Staking withdrawals are enabled; however, as more and more validators exit the staking program, ETH may suffer from potential selling.
Ethereum’s Shapella Upgrade
The Shapella upgrade was successfully implemented on Ethereum mainnet on Wednesday. This monumental occasion caused a surprising reaction in ETH – with 73,214 ETH already withdrawn since staking withdrawals have been enabled.
Staking Withdrawal Enabled
ETH staking withdrawals were enabled at 11:27 PM UTC on Wednesday. Since then, the price of ETH has remained flat at $1,913 according to CoinGecko data, despite initial expectations that it would rapidly decrease upon implementation of the upgrade. 27,181 withdrawals have been processed so far with total staked ETH decreasing by only 0.269%. Huobi is currently able to withdraw the largest amount of ETH (39,776), followed closely by PieDAO and Kraken respectively.
Proof-of-Stake Live
The Shapella upgrade marks the full implementation of proof-of-stake consensus mechanism on Ethereum; users can now enter and exit the staking program whenever they want without having to lock up their funds for long periods of time as was previously necessary before this upgrade was activated.
Potential Selling Concerns
As more validators are able to fully exit from their staked positions in Ethereum there is potential for large amounts of sell pressure due to these large entities cashing out their rewards all at once – potentially driving down prices in a rapid manner if enough players decide to do so simultaneously.
Conclusion
The Shapella upgrade is one of the largest upgrades in Ethereum’s history and offers many benefits such as ease of entry/exit into/outof staking programs without having to lock up funds for extended periods of time while also offering rewards for those who choose to participate in this type of activity within the network itself – although it remains to be seen what kind of effect this will have on prices in both short term and long terms scenarios moving forwards!