Ethereum developers are taking a big step forward with the launch of a new test environment, “Zhejiang”, that will allow for testing of ETH withdrawals. This highly anticipated feature, known as Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4895, will allow users to withdraw their staked ETH tokens after they’ve been staked on the new proof-of-stake blockchain.
The Zhejiang testnet went live on Wednesday, February 1st at 15:00 UTC, but regular users did have to wait until February 7th to try out the simulated withdrawals. This launch comes after a private testnet for Ethereum developers, which got off to a rocky start but later stabilised.
The ability to withdraw staked ETH is a crucial part of the upcoming major upgrade of the Ethereum network known as the Shanghai hard fork. Progress toward the Shanghai upgrade is looking good, and developers are confident that there are no issues that could delay it.