21 posts tagged with "Ethereum"

Withdrawals, gas tweaks, and what came next—without the hype.

The Short Version​

The Shapella upgrade, a portmanteau of Shanghai (for the execution layer) and Capella (for the consensus layer), went live on Ethereum on April 12, 2023. Its landmark feature was enabling staking withdrawals for the first time since the Beacon Chain's launch.

The headline change, EIP-4895, introduced a system where validator withdrawals are automatically "pushed" from the consensus layer to the execution layer, requiring no user transaction or gas fees. Alongside this, four smaller EIPs shipped to fine-tune the EVM, including gas cost reductions (Warm COINBASE), bytecode optimizations (PUSH0), and contract creation limits (Initcode metering). The upgrade also served as a final warning to developers that the SELFDESTRUCT opcode was on its way out.

Shapella effectively closed the loop on the Merge, and the next major upgrade, Dencun, followed on March 13, 2024, shifting the network's focus to scalability with EIP-4844 "blobs."

Why Shapella Was a Critical Milestone​

From the Beacon Chain's inception until April 2023, staking ETH was a one-way street. You could deposit 32 ETH to help secure the network and earn rewards, but you couldn't get your principal or those consensus-layer rewards back out. This locked liquidity was a significant commitment and a barrier for many potential stakers.

Shapella changed everything by opening the exit door.

The upgrade's core was EIP-4895, which ingeniously designed a system-level "withdrawal operation." Instead of requiring stakers to craft a transaction and pay gas to withdraw, the protocol itself now automatically sweeps eligible funds from the consensus layer and pushes them into the execution layer. This clean, push-based design minimized complexity and risk, making the change much easier to test and deploy safely.

What Actually Changed: The EIPs in Plain English​

Shapella was a bundle of five key Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs):

• EIP-4895 — Beacon Chain Withdrawals (Push-based) This was the main event. It enabled both partial (rewards) and full (principal + rewards) withdrawals to flow from the consensus layer to a staker's specified withdrawal address. The key innovation is that these are not user-initiated transactions; they are automatic operations embedded in proposed blocks.

• EIP-3651 — “Warm COINBASE” This EIP made a small but important gas optimization. In the EVM, COINBASE refers to the address of the block producer (the validator), not the exchange. Before Shapella, the first time a smart contract accessed this address within a transaction, it incurred a higher gas cost. EIP-3651 made the COINBASE address "warm" by default, reducing the gas cost for protocols that frequently interact with it, such as those paying MEV tips directly to the block builder.

• EIP-3855 — PUSH0 Opcode A simple but elegant addition to the EVM. This new opcode, PUSH0, does exactly what it says: it pushes the value zero onto the stack. Previously, developers had to use heavier, more expensive opcodes to achieve this. PUSH0 makes bytecode slightly smaller and more gas-efficient, especially for the numerous contracts that initialize variables to zero.

• EIP-3860 — Limit & Meter initcode This change introduced two rules for the code used to create a smart contract (initcode). First, it capped the maximum size of initcode at 49,152 bytes. Second, it added a small gas fee for every 32-byte chunk of this code. This prevents denial-of-service attacks involving overly large contracts and makes contract creation costs more predictable.

• EIP-6049 — Deprecate SELFDESTRUCT (Warning) This wasn't a code change but a formal warning to the developer community. It signaled that the SELFDESTRUCT opcode, which allows a contract to delete itself and send its ETH to a target address, would have its functionality drastically changed in a future upgrade. This gave developers time to phase out their reliance on it before the Dencun upgrade later altered its behavior with EIP-6780.

Withdrawals 101: Partial vs. Full​

Shapella introduced two types of automatic withdrawals, each with its own rules.

• Partial Withdrawals These are automatic rewards sweeps. If a validator's balance grows above 32 ETH from consensus-layer rewards, the protocol automatically "skims" the excess amount and sends it to the designated withdrawal address. The validator remains active and continues its duties. This happens with no action required from the staker.

• Full Withdrawals (Exiting) This is for stakers who want to stop validating and retrieve their entire balance. The staker must first broadcast a voluntary exit message. After a waiting period, the validator becomes eligible for a full withdrawal. Once processed in the sweep, the entire balance is sent to the withdrawal address, and the validator is no longer part of the active set.

Throughput and Cadence​

The network is designed to process withdrawals smoothly without causing instability.

• Up to 16 withdrawals can be included in each block (every 12 seconds), allowing for a maximum of approximately 115,200 withdrawals per day.
• The block proposer scans the list of active validators and includes the first 16 eligible withdrawals. The next block proposer picks up where the last one left off, ensuring every validator gets a turn in the queue.
• To prevent a mass exodus from destabilizing the network, the number of validators that can exit per epoch (every ~6.4 minutes) is limited by a churn limit. This limit is dynamic based on the total number of active validators, smoothing out exit waves.

It's also important to note that consensus-layer rewards are handled by this EIP-4895 withdrawal mechanism, while execution-layer rewards (priority fees and MEV) are sent directly to a validator's configured fee recipient address and are available immediately.

What Came Next: Dencun and the Road to Scalability​

Shapella marked the successful completion of the "Merge era." With staking now a fully liquid, two-way process, developers turned their attention to Ethereum's next big challenge: scalability.

The very next major upgrade, Dencun (Deneb + Cancun), arrived on March 13, 2024. Its centerpiece was EIP-4844, which introduced "blobs"—a new, cheaper way for Layer 2 rollups to post transaction data to the Ethereum mainnet. This dramatically lowered transaction fees on L2s and was a massive step forward on the rollup-centric roadmap. Dencun also delivered on the promise of EIP-6049 by implementing EIP-6780, which significantly curtailed the power of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode.

The Big Picture​

Shapella was the essential confidence milestone for Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake consensus. By enabling withdrawals, it de-risked staking, restored liquidity, and affirmed the network's ability to execute complex, coordinated upgrades. It also delivered a handful of pragmatic EVM improvements that cleaned up technical debt and paved the way for future optimizations.

In short, Shapella didn't just open the exit door for stakers—it solidified the foundation of the post-Merge era and cleared the runway for Ethereum to focus on its next frontier: mass scalability.

We are on a mission to build and accelerate the web3 industry of tomorrow. We obsess about developer experience and strive towards constant innovation. And that's why now we are offering a decentralized file store, powered by EthStorage. dStore is a managed storage solution for creators and developers from any blockchain. It's user-friendly, EVM-compatible, low-cost, and petabyte-level scale, all powered by EthStorage.

What is EthStorage?​

EthStorage is a layer 2 solution that provides programmable dynamic storage based on Ethereum's data availability. It will greatly reduce the storage cost of storing a large amount of data on Ethereum, saving the cost from 1% to 0.1%. The low cost of storing large data by EthStorage can better enable a fully decentralized network in the future. EthStorage is highly integrated with EVM and is compatible with Solidity, Remix, Hardhat, and MetaMask. The team received a research grant from the Ethereum Foundation for data availability research.

EthStorage is invented by Dr. Qi Zhou, the founder of QuarkChain and author of EIP-4804/4972/5018/5027/5478. You can track EthStorage's statuses from the following sources:

• Website: http://ethstorage.io/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/EthStorage
• Medium: https://ethstorage.medium.com/
• Telegram: https://t.me/ethstorage
• Discord: https://discord.gg/mZqqUZxjed

Why does decentralized storage matter?​

Decentralized storage is important because it allows for data to be stored in a distributed manner rather than being stored in a single location. This has several advantages, such as increased security and reliability, as well as improved accessibility. For example, because decentralized storage systems are distributed, they are less vulnerable to attacks, censorship, or failure and can continue to function even if some of the individual components fail. Additionally, because the data is stored on multiple devices, it can be accessed from multiple locations, making it more convenient for users.

What is BlockEden. xyz's dStore offering?​

We strongly believe Dr. Zhou's vision to bring more cost-effective storage to the decentralized web and would like to collaborate with his team to democratize this innovation to every web3 developer on the planet.

More specifically, we will apply EthStorage as the underlying vendor of our blob store. Our developers can develop upon it to build their DApps faster and scale instantly.

Web portal for file management

Developers and creators can drag and drop their static assets to this file store and easily manage them. We free them from the hassles of managing private keys, paying transaction fees, and maintaining files with blockchains.

To ensure the decentralization of the storage, developers could eject the managed store to their own address anytime. Furthermore, we will open source the backend of the file store so that developers or other developer-facing providers can easily host file management services.

Unlocking new business possibilities through strategic partnerships​

There are also future integration opportunities between EthStorage and BlockEden.xyz, in addition to the dStore launched today.

CDN to speed up the read

Most Internet services are read-intensive and take time to serve a large number of resources from a decentralized store. With our CDN service, developers can enjoy both the decentralization of the source files and the blazing-fast speed that we can achieve with a CDN.

Node service and API gateway to EthStorage

We will provide API access to EthStorage testnet and mainnet blockchain nodes after EthStorage mainnet launch for developers and businesses. Here are a few reasons why developers should choose us instead of their own or the official nodes:

1. Easy Access to blockchain Nodes: BlockEden.xyz ChainPlus API provides easy access to EthStorage nodes, which can be used to interact with these blockchain networks. Starts to build in 10s, instead of spending 20 hours to start, countless hours to maintain!

2. Scalability: BlockEden.xyz provides highly scalable nodes that can handle high levels of traffic and transactions. This can be important for businesses and projects requiring large amounts of data or user activity.

3. Reliability: BlockEden.xyz nodes are highly reliable, with an uptime of 99.9%. This can be important for businesses and projects that need to ensure that their applications or services are always available to users.

How to use dStore with EthStorage?​

Step 1. Go to https://BlockEden.xyz/dash/dstore and then drag and drop your files to the window.

Step 2. After the file is uploaded to the EthStorage successfully, you will see the item in the table, then right-click the row and select "Copy URL" to get the link. You can also delete a file by selecting "Delete".

Admittedly, the current version of dStore has some limitations. We don't support uploading directories and large files (size > 2MB). It may take tens of seconds to upload mid-sized images. However, this is just an initial version, and we will keep improving the product in the long run.

Dr. Qi Zhou, founder of EthStorage, share his praise on twitter -

Introducing dStore @BlockEdenHQ!

dStore makes it super easy for devs and creators to manage files on @EthStorage with web3:// protocol without their own keys. We expect to see more integrations from it and more early teams like the capable @BlockEdenHQ to build our ecosystem.

— Qi Zhou (@qc_qizhou) February 20, 2023

Mike Thrift, BD at BlockEden.xyz, commented, "dStore enriched our bundled offering to the creators and developers and laid a solid foundation for our aggregated function API services to blockchains. It made us an active contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem and gave our Aptos and Sui developers a more cost-effective and flexible choice than IPFS or Arweave."

BlockEden.xyz is committed to providing the best developer experiences to web3 developers, which does not limit to Blockchain RPCs. The decentralized storage opens new doors for developers to manage their NFT assets and files in our one-stop shop. Get started today for free at https://blockeden.xyz/dstore

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlockEdenHQ
• Discord: https://discord.gg/eWZvE4RSBw
• Source Link: https://blockeden.xyz/blog/2023/03/15/boost-your-web3-development-with-blockeden-xyz-chat/

Back to a month ago, we made a public incognito Ethereum mainnet RPC endpoint available to Metamask users (blog post), which attracted and was used by a few users. Now we decided to expand the benefit to our developer customers too!

How to get started?​

Step 1. Go to https://blockeden.xyz/dash/. Please sign up if you haven’t done so.

Step 2. Input your name for the API key, select ETH Mainnet, and then click + Create key.

Step 3. Grab your access URL by clicking it and copying it to the clipboard.

Step 4. Use the access URL in your project like the following. Remember to replace <access_key> with your own key.

To test it, using curl to connect ETH mainnet

curl --location --request POST 'https://eth-mainnet.blockeden.xyz/<access_key>' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
        "jsonrpc":"2.0",
        "method":"eth_blockNumber",
        "params":[],
        "id":73
}'

Why Ethereum Network?​

Ethereum network has the biggest developer ecosystem, and there are so many great innovations accumulated over years. Supporting it is going to create significant synergy with Move ecosystem. Many of our customers are not exclusive Move developers. Building a single stop for all needed services makes their life easier.

Enjoy our new service and happy holidays!