Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is undergoing two significant simultaneous upgrades called "Shanghai" and Capella, or Shapella as the devs have come to call it, and it goes live on April 12 at 10:57 pm UTC.
But what is it exactly and what does it mean for me?
Shapella is part of Ethereum's broader roadmap, which includes the recent London hard fork and the ongoing transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) system to improve scalability, energy efficiency, and overall performance.
Shapella will make it cheaper and easier for ETH holders to stake their tokens. Think of staking like buying a bond, only the bondholders can participate in the validating and governing process of Ethereum and earn yields as a reward for participating. The system currently requires those wishing to stake to put up 32 ETH, or about $60,000, pretty steep for many people.
Shapella will also allow token holders to un-stake, or withdraw, their tokens. Under current system rules, once you stake tokens they are locked in their governance node. Now, ETH holders can pull them out.
Shapella aims to boost transaction speeds and lower "Gas" fees, or the cost of transactions on the blockchain. Ethereum is a smart-contract platform, created to allow Decentralized Applications, or DAPs, to fire information back and forth quickly and seamlessly without centralized permission. If more activity means higher and higher fees, the entire ecosystem can not scale. A new protocol called EIP-1559 aims to fix that. You'll probably hear more about that later
Reports are that Shapella is running well on testnet and devs and the community expect smooth implementation.