Shanghai, the important Ethereum update that will allow withdrawal of stacked ETH, is expected to arrive on April 12.
The news of the confirmed date for the Shanghai hard fork was shared on Twitter Thursday by lead Ethereum developer Tim Beiko, who also said the upgrade will occur at block 6209536.
The confirmed date represents a slight delay compared to previous announcements from Beiko during a developer reminder in December last year.
At the time, Mr Beiko set a March deadline for the upgrade and said allowing withdrawals was “clearly the highest priority for everyone”.
The Shanghai hard fork is a highly anticipated update for ETH holdersgiven that it will allow withdrawals of ETH tokens that have been staked on Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.
It is also believed that this upgrade will attract more stakers to the Ethereum network, which could ultimately benefit the price of ETH.
Some remain skeptical
Not being able to withdraw staking ETH has been a somewhat controversial topic in the crypto community, with some Ethereum critics openly wondering if the network will ever open up to such withdrawals.
As recently as January this year, a bitcoin holder who remained skeptical about withdrawing from stacked ETH bet with Eric Walla famous cryptocurrency investor and analyst, for a tungsten cube.
Wall proudly spoke about this bet to his Twitter followers, while sharing details of previous tungsten cube bets he had won with others in the crypto community.
“Bitcoin holders are always confident and talk nonsense every year. As long as they do that, I’ll keep collecting cubes from them,” he said.