Scant Optimism Over Shanghai Upgrade’s Impact on ETH: Poll

ETH investors will have little to celebrate when the Shanghai upgrade goes live this Wednesday, according to an April 9th Twitter poll by crypto media outlet Coin Bureau. Asked how the price of ETH will react to Ethereum’s latest upgrade, 44.8% of respondents predicted that it will decrease. Just 23.5% of the poll’s 7,553 respondents predicted an increase, while 31.7% expected no change. The bearish forecast reflected concerns about the unlocking of close to 18 million staked ETH – approximately 15% of the total supply – scheduled under the upgrade.

Interesting viewpoint so far. Here are my views (NFA of course ?):

On upgrade, withdrawals will be rate limited by epoch. This could prevent the large scale «dump» that many are expecting. Partial withdrawals could still see about 1.1m $ETH sell pressure hitting the market over…

— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) April 9, 2023

The upgrade, which has been dubbed ‘Shanghai’, is a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain that will implement EIP-4895, enabling validators to withdraw ETH staked in the Beacon Chain. The protocol has proved controversial, stirring fears of a sudden influx to the circulating supply of ETH from validators rushing to liquidate their tokens.

Commenting on the poll results, Coin Bureau was more optimistic. The outlet pointed out that ETH withdrawals are to be “rate limited by epoch” and that the expected additional sell pressure would be “modest” relative to the daily trading volume. It predicted a positive medium to long-term outlook for ETH, citing the possibility of increased demand if new institutional validators start staking in response to the upgrade.

Staking has been at the core of the Ethereum blockchain since the Merge switched Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (PoS) in September 2022. The current pool of staked ETH dates back to December 2020, however, when the PoS-reliant Beacon Chain was released.

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