Glossary
Shapella Upgrade
The April 2023 Ethereum upgrade that enabled validator withdrawals from the beacon chain — completing the transition started by the Merge six months earlier.
Shapella ("Shanghai" on execution + "Capella" on consensus) activated on April 12, 2023. Its central feature was enabling withdrawals from the beacon chain: validators could now withdraw their staked ETH plus accumulated rewards back to the execution layer.
Before Shapella, beacon-chain ETH had been one-way — staked since late 2020 with no exit. The upgrade closed the loop and removed a major hurdle for institutional ETH staking, while introducing new dynamics around the validator activation and exit queues.