Sepolia Shapella upgrade scheduled on 2/28/2023

Tim Beiko, Ethereum core developer announces the news that the Sepolia Shapella upgrade has been scheduled. Sepolia, which is the first of the long-standing public testnets, is scheduled to go through an upgrade 2/28/2023, 4:04:48 AM UTC.

The last testnet to receive the Shapella update is Goerli, which will happen once Sepolia has gone through its own round of testing. The Ethereum Foundation announced in a blog post that the Shapella, which is the Shanghai + Capella mainnet upgrade, has moved into the final pre-launch sequence, which includes public testnets. Capella is a consensus layer upgrade containing several features related to validator withdrawals. Meanwhile, Ethereum's Shanghai update (EIP-4895) will allow ETH stakers to withdraw their staked funds as validators.

Sepolia Shapella upgrade has been scheduled 👀 pic.twitter.com/9FLo7apAe0
— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) February 10, 2023

Shapella Fork on Zhejiang Testnet was successful. Developers saw no major issues or bugs. There is also a possibility of Withdrawal Devnet 7. Relays and Builders are yet tested on the Shapella Testnets. Also, there is an MEV Boost implementation ready for testing. The first of the long standing public testnets Sepolia is scheduled to go through the upgrade on February 28th.

Shapella contains many features, but most importantly to stakers, is the enabling of withdrawals. Full withdrawals will be available for exited validators, whereas partial withdrawals will be available for active validator balances in excess of 32 ETH. For validators to participate in withdrawals, they must have a 0x01 execution layer withdrawal credential. If a validator currently has a 0x00 BLS withdrawal credential, they must sign a change operation to 0x01 to enable withdrawals. For validators who want to migrate from 0x00 credential to 0x01. They should follow BLS to execution with ethdo guide by Barnabas Busa.