On the 26th of February 2023, a verified Twitter user, speculated on a thread that the upcoming Shanghai upgrade on Ethereum might be a mega heist.
an 11-figure heist is happening over at Ethereum
the core devs team is planning to hard fork the so-called “decentralized” blockchain to enable 16.8 million consensually locked ETH to be sold on the open market, potentially sending token price to ZERO
16.8m ETH = $27 billion
— kamikaz Ξ (@kamikaz_ETH) February 26, 2023
The anonymous Twitter handle, Kamikaz_Eth, referred to the upcoming Shanghai Ethereum upgrade as an 11-figure heist adding speculations that the core development team is planning to hard fork the Ethereum blockchain. This, he claims should be decentralized but is set up in a tactic to enable 16.8 million consensually locked ETH to be sold on the open market, potentially declining the token price to zero, which will result in 16.8m ETH worth $27 billion being sold on the open market, effectively crashing the price.
Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade which is expected to take off sometime in March 2023 will officially mark the transition of Ethereum to a proof-of-stake network where all problems from the Merge will be resolved and will propel liquid staking to finally thrive on Ethereum. This is undoubtedly the next major development to happen to the largest smart contract platform in the crypto industry since the Ethereum Merge.
The network’s upcoming upgrade will take the benefits of proof-of-stake to the next level by lifting restrictions on staked ETH and will shift focus on giving validators free access to their earned rewards and also focus on facilitating the withdrawal of staked ETH, which could have a ripple effect on the supply and demand on ETH in the market.
Apparently, the ETH currently staked, can’t be unstaked and might affect the interest of most people as only more than 16 million ETH is staked, accounting for a total of only 13.88% of the total supply, which is notably less than the average staking rate of 61% in PoS networks.
Many Twitter users in the crypto community believe that the thread from Kamikaz is baseless and for the sole purpose of engagement farming. The assumption that all staked ETH is possibly going to be offloaded in the open market without proper incentive is baseless.
Most members of the ETH stake are in it for the long run, and there is adequate liquidity for staked ETH as users can sell StETH for the value of their staked ETH. It is also logical to believe that the Shanghai upgrade would pump the price of ETH along with other related tokens.
The more logical belief is that after the staked ETH has been successfully unstaked, more users would desire the potential benefits and the amount of staked ETH would increase from 13% to potentially 30%.
