Shapella is a planned network upgrade to activate withdrawal of staking rewards.

• Mainnet upgrade date - Wednesday, 12th of April
• Epoch - 194048
• EIP-4895 : Beacon chain push withdrawals as operations
• EIP-3540 : EVM Object Format (EOF) v1
• Ethereum Foundation's Shapella Mainnet Announcement

For more information regarding Shapella do check our shapella page by clicking here.

The Merge is a planned network upgrade for switching consensus from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

• Mainnet upgrade date - Thursday, 15th of September
• TTD - 58750000000000000000000
• EIP-4399 : Supplant DIFFICULTY opcode with PREVRANDAO
• EIP-3675 : Upgrade consensus to Proof-of-Stake
• Ethereum Foundation's Mainnet Merge Announcement

For more information regarding The Merge do check our merge page by clicking here.

This is a planned upgrade to delay the difficulty bomb to be noticeable in Summer 2022.

• Mainnet upgrade date - Thursday, 30th of June
• Block - 15050000
• EIP-5133: Delaying Difficulty Bomb to mid-September 2022
• Ethereum Foundation's Gray Glacier Upgrade Announcement

To understand how the “Difficulty Bomb” works in the Ethereum blockchain, please follow the recording of PEEPanEIP#54: EIP-4345: Difficulty Bomb Delay to June 2022 with T Jay Rush

This is a planned upgrade to delay the difficulty bomb to be noticeable in Summer 2022.

• Mainnet upgrade date - Wednesday, 8th of December
• Planned for epoch - 13773000
• EIP-4345: Difficulty Bomb Delay to June 2022
• ECH explainer - Ethereum Arrow Glacier Upgrade
• Ethereum Foundation's Arrow Glacier Upgrade Announcement

To understand how the “Difficulty Bomb” works in the Ethereum blockchain, please follow the recording of [EIP-4345: Difficulty Bomb Delay to June 2022 with T Jay Rush] & PEEPanEIP #39: Difficulty bomb & EIP-3554 with James Hancock.

This is the first planned network upgrade for the Beacon chain (Ethereum 2.0). It is already activated on the Prater testnet. Follow the consensus monitor shared by Alex Stokes.

• Mainnet upgrade date - Wednesday, 27th of October
• Planned for epoch - 74240
• Expected time - 10:56:23 UTC
• Ethereum Foundation's Altair Mainnet Announcement

Resources

PEEPanEIP recordings

Altair Beacon chain upgrade with Vitalik and Danny

Altair - Accounting reform with Alex Stokes

Altair in Teku with Adrian Sutton

Altair upgrade & roadmap (Prysm) with Raul Jordan & Terence

Beacon chain metrics & benchmarking with Parithosh & Leonardo

A Brief History of Ethereum's Future with Ben Edgington