Part 4: Upgrades

Capella

Capella is the next planned upgrade to the consensus layer after Bellatrix. It is scheduled to take place at 22:27:35 UTC on April the 12th, 2023.

The only feature included in the Capella upgrade is beacon chain withdrawals. Withdrawals will finally allow stakers to recover their stakes and rewards from the beacon chain into normal Ethereum addresses.

Two withdrawal mechanisms are planned.

1. Exited and withdrawable validators will have their full balances automatically transferred to their withdrawal addresses.
2. Excess balances from active validators will be regularly swept into their withdrawal addresses.

The above operations are possible only for validators that have 0x01 type credentials. A mechanism for updating validators from 0x00 to 0x01 credentials will also be provided.

The Engine API will be modified to allow withdrawal data to be passed from the consensus client to the execution client. The execution client will credit users' accounts accordingly.

A working draft of changes between Bellatrix and Capella is in the Capella specs.

The consensus layer's Capella upgrade will happen simultaneously with the execution layer's Shanghai upgrade.