The world’s biggest smart contract network, Ethereum, is getting a little bit closer to release the $26 billion worth (and growing) of ETH staked by its users. The first mainnet shadow fork to verify the preparedness of ETH staking withdrawal capacity went live on Monday. As stated by Ethereum’s core developers. This capability is scheduled to be live in March.

Developers may check for design problems. And make any necessary adjustments before releasing an updated version of the system. By conducting complete dress rehearsals of the upgrade using mainnet shadow forks. The Shanghai update, which will bring staked ETH withdrawals to the Ethereum ecosystem, was previewed in a test run on Monday.

The Ethereum network switched to a proof-of-stake architecture in September, and this historic merging will be the first big upgrade since then. The integration also allowed users to become validators by depositing ETH with the network to verify on-chain transactions. In exchange, they have been able to amass incentives in the form of freshly created ETH.

Since December 2020, users have staked about $26.5 billion USD worth of ETH to qualify for these payouts. However, users won’t be able to withdraw their freshly created ETH or their old ETH deposits until Shanghai is live.

On Monday, Ethereum core developer Marius Van Der Wijden revealed on Twitter that, despite a few initial hiccups that have since been fixed, the first ETH withdrawal mainnet shadow fork had begun successfully. That indicates Ethereum is on track to provide ETH withdrawal features within the next five to eight weeks.