The much-awaited Shapella update on Ethereum has gone live, paving the way for new features like the unstaking of Ether (ETH). Community members celebrated with various responses to the newest update to the Ethereum ecosystem. 

Shapella is a term the community uses that blends together “Shanghai” and “Capella,” the upgrades that happened simultaneously. The hard fork is an important milestone on Ethereum’s roadmap, leaving a lot of community members excited for the network’s future.

Many members of the community offered their congratulations to the developers of the network. Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan said that while proof-of-stake (PoS) took some time, the loop was finally complete.

At the Shapella watch party hosted by the Ethereum Foundation team, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that the network is now in a “really good place.” He explained that:

“We’re in a stage where the hardest and the fastest parts of the Ethereum protocol’s transition are basically over. Very significant things still need to be done, but those can be done at a slower pace.” 

Meanwhile, crypto singer Jonathan Mann celebrated the new update with another song performance at the Shapella watch party. 

Can we make this image a meme? pic.twitter.com/vC2pwKkLXd

— songadaymann.lens (@songadaymann) April 12, 2023

While some celebrated the event, others looked forward to the network’s future. Ethereum community member Anthony Sassano reminded the community that the next major feature would be EIP-4844, which aims to enhance the scalability of rollups on Ethereum. 

Related: Ethereum price turns bullish ahead of next week’s Shanghai and Capella upgrades

Meanwhile, blockchain analytics firm Glassnode expects that even though the Shapella update will unlock staked ETH, less than 1% are planning to sell. The analytics company said that only 253 validators had signed up to exit. Apart from this, there are also mechanisms in place to prevent a massive flood of ETH supply from being dumped in the markets at the same time.

One of the expected effects of the Shapella update is the onboarding of more institutional investors to Ethereum. Freddy Zwanzger, Ethereum ecosystem lead at Blockdaemon, foresees that there may be more interest in ETH staking opportunities from larger investors since there’s a clear withdrawal option in place now.

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