Ethereum developers activate Shapella hard fork on Goerli testnet

The Ethereum team carried out the Shanghai-Capella (Shapella) hard fork on the Goerli testnet. According to the developers, it will be the last before the mainnet activation of the upgrade.

15 epochs later, Goerli has finalized.

There was nothing wrong with the Client software. We just had to get the offline operators to upgrade. It was a good stress test.

On to the next one. Mainnet! https://t.co/s573n5pC9f

— terence.eth (@terencechain) March 15, 2023

Earlier, Shapella was activated on the Sepolia testnet. The hard fork includes changes to Ethereum’s consensus and execution layers. Its primary aim is to enable withdrawals of ETH from staking.

During the Goerli upgrade, the team encountered problems — due to low network participation, the hard fork implementation took 15 эпох. According to developer Tim Beiko, this was due to users lacking incentives to become validators, because “ETH [in the testnet] is worthless”.

Deposits are being processed (https://t.co/CxYtPcGMCp), but it seems like several validators haven’t upgraded. Looking into it ?

One challenge with testnet validators is that given the ETH is worthless, there’s less incentive to run a validator/monitor it.

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 14, 2023

As reported, the Ethereum team planned the activation of Shapella on the mainnet around mid-April.