Ethereum’s upcoming Shanghai fork is the biggest upgrade since the September transition to the proof of stake (PoS) consensus, known as the Merge. It introduces a number of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), so it’s natural to wonder what it means for the broader Ethereum ecosystem and the Polygon network. 

The biggest change is that Ethereum stakers, users who deposit their ETH to help validate the network, will be able to withdraw their funds. There will be no impact on the functionality of Polygon PoS or the Polygon PoS bridge when the fork happens, which is currently expected to be around April 12. 

Here is the list of the most noteworthy improvement to the Ethereum network:

• EIP-4895: Beacon Chain Push Withdrawals -- just what it says on the tin, withdrawals switch on.
• EIP-3651: Warm COINBASE -- reduces gas fees for builders, those who order transactions in the block before sending it to validators.
• EIP-3855: PUSH0 Instruction -- aims to lower the gas cost of deploying contracts by introducing a new PUSH0 instruction.
• EIP-3860: Limit and Meter Initcode -- introduces a gas cost limit and meter for contract initialization code, which should help to reduce gas costs for developers.
• EIP-6049: Deprecate SELFDESTRUCT -- formally announces client developers' intention of changing the behavior of SELFDESTRUCT in future upgrades. While that functionality remains unchanged for the time being, it is recommended that software which exposes this opcode to users warn them about an upcoming change in semantics.

You can find out more on the Shanghai Upgrade github page. Tune into the blog and our social channels to stay up to date on the latest from the Polygon ecosystem.

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