Ethereum has achieved one major development-related milestone every year. Take the case of the last couple of years. In 2021, the network underwent the London hard fork. That introduced five new Ethereum Improvement Proposals, including EIP-1559. Then, The Merge happened last year. The upgrade changed Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from proof of work to proof of stake.
As far as 2023 is concerned, the community has been bracing itself for the Shanghai hard fork. The same is set to take place over the course of the next few months and intends to unlock staking withdrawals. Earlier this week, an Ethereum testnet processed its first ETH withdrawal, bringing the network a step closer to the actual upgrade.
Read More: Staked Ethereum Undergoes 1st Withdrawal On ‘Zhejiang’ TestNet
How to prepare for the staking withdrawal upgrade?
Ethereum recently updated its staking withdrawals page. With the new upgrade, users will be able to opt-in to automatically receive their rewards in a provided account. Alongside, they can also withdraw their staked ETH whenever they want.
Users who have provided a withdrawal address while setting up their staking deposit initially do not have much to do. The official website highlighted that the majority of stakers did not provide the said address at the time of their initial deposit. Thus, this set of users will have to update their credentials.
According to the Zhejiang Testnet Launchpad, once this is done, stakers will have to “signal” their intent to exit staking by “signing and broadcasting a voluntary exit message to the network” via their validator keys and validator client. Doing so will help them “exit staking” and entirely withdraw the remaining balance.
As far as Ethereum stakers who have not yet deposited their tokens are concerned, the guide on the website noted,
“By default, new stakers looking to automatically enable reward payments and withdrawal functionality should provide an Ethereum withdrawal address they control when generating their validator keys using the Staking Deposit CLI tool.”
This is not required at the time of deposit. However, doing so will avert the need to update keys to unlock funds going forward.
The Staking Launchpad will guide users on the onboarding process. Like explained in a recent article, only a handful of steps need to be followed to do so.
Also Read: How to Stake Ethereum [2023]