According to Tim Beiko, the coordinator of Ethereum Core Developers, “We want withdrawals to happen relatively quickly on mainnet. This is clearly the highest priority.”
Ethereum developers announced their plans to launch the Shanghai update in March 2023 in the recent Ethereum Core Developers Meeting,
Currently, Ethereum does not allow users to un-stake their Ethereum assets. Statistics from Dune Analytics revealed that over 15M ETH tokens (worth $19.9B) are staked on the Beacon Chain. The much-anticipated Shanghai hard fork will address this issue by allowing users to withdraw their staked ETH assets along with the staking rewards.
The Shanghai update will implement EIP-4895 to allow validator withdrawals from the Beacon Chain. The Ethereum core developers also plan to upgrade the EVM by implementing a series of Ethereum Improvement Proposals. These proposals include EIP-3670, EIP-4570, and EIP-5450, among others.
The developers noted that adding support for withdrawing staked ETH tokens will be their priority. As such, they will postpone upgrading the EVM if it slows down the implementation of EIP-4895.
The developers have also removed EIP-4844 from the lineup of proposals that are slated to release with the Shanghai update. The proposal seeks to introduce ‘Proto-Danksharding.' This will add 1MB of space for a data blob to accompany transactions on the Ethereum network to increase scalability.
Ethereum developers said they will start rolling out mainnet shadow forks in January 2023. They also plan to release EIP-4844 in another update scheduled for June 2023.