Ethereum Foundation Researcher Alerts of Network Instability, Privacy Issues Post Shanghai Upgrade: Details

Justin Drake, a researcher part of the Ethereum Foundation has sounded an alert around some network inconsistencies that have emerged after the Ethereum blockchain complete its Shanghai upgrade. In an interview, Drake said that IP addresses of ETH stakers are being made visible post the network upgrade, raising privacy issues. The Shanghai upgrade will let people withdraw their staked Ether, bringing more liquidity to the network. Ethereum developers, after months of thorough testing, have deployed the upgrade, in the backdrop of which ETH has reached its nine-month high price point of $2,107 (roughly Rs. 1.71 lakh).

“There's a lot of metadata, you can look at deposit addresses, you can look at withdrawal addresses, you can look at fee recipients, you can look at IP addresses,” Drake said in the Bankless crypto podcast.

For now, it remains unclear by when Ethereum developers would tackle these issues.

Meanwhile, the researcher has predicted that solo ETH stakers could soon get special airdrops, which would probably not be distributed to industry mammoths.

“We know who Kraken is, we know who Coinbase is, and we can just not give them an airdrop if the purpose of the airdrop is to airdrop to specific individuals that are running solo validators,” CoinTelegraph quoted Drake as saying further in the podcast conversation.

The Ethereum blockchain went through its second major upgrade called Shanghai on April 13.

Ahead of the update, industry insiders had warned members of the Ethereum ecosystem against potential glitches and network issues that may follow the upgrade completion.

Ilya Volkov, CEO of and Co-Founder of Web3 fintech firm YouHodler had told Gadgets 360 that the Shanghai Upgrade can expose users to a number of scams.

“People need to be alert so as to avoid falling prey to specifically phishing attacks involving fake wallet or staking services or in the form of false promises of guaranteed high returns on staked ETH,” Volkov had said at the time.