Seychelles-based crypto exchange OKX has announced it will be temporarily suspending deposits and withdrawals of ETH, OP, ARB and ERC-20 tokens due to the upcoming Ethereum Shapella upgrade.
The upgrade is anticipated to take place on April 12 at approximately 10:27 p.m. (UTC), at epoch 194,048.
Given this, deposits and withdrawals will be temporarily suspended on the OKX crypto exchange for the tokens for about one hour on April 12, 2023, at 9:30 p.m. UTC, until the upgrade is completed.
Interoperability platform Wanchain also says that due to the upcoming Shapella upgrade, the WanBridge frontend will be temporarily unaccessible beginning at 10 p.m. UTC on April 12.
As earlier reported, Binance will be temporarily suspending deposits and withdrawals for ETH, OP, ARB and ERC-20 tokens via the Ethereum (ETH), Optimism (OP) and Arbitrum (ARB) networks, starting from April 12 at 10:20 p.m. (UTC).
How will Ethereum react?
According to IntoTheBlock, a total of 3,614 out of 562,717 ETH validators have chosen to withdraw their ETH from staking, as of yesterday.
The on-chain analytics firm says that although the Ethereum network may experience an initial drop due to withdrawals from staking, the amount of ETH staked will probably increase in the weeks following the Shanghai fork.
This is because retail holders who were previously unsure about depositing their assets for an uncertain amount of time may now begin to slowly stake more. Additionally, institutional investors who were previously unable to lock their limited partners' capital into staking will now be able to earn yields on their ETH, eliminating previous risks.
IntoTheBlock predicts the increase in staking could potentially reach as high as 25% to 30% within a year.