With the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade anticipated for March, the most-awaited upgrade after the Merge, developers are moving closer to the goal to enable withdrawals of Ethereum staked on the Beacon chain.

Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko on Friday said developer Marius VanDerWijden found a vulnerability with the public test network Shapella. The issue appeared during the full synchronization of empty blocks, which has no transactions or withdrawals.

Bank Frick, the European pioneer of blockchain banking, is now offering clients staking as a service for digital assets.The new staking service offers Bank Frick clients the chance to win rewards in the form of newly generated digital assets - similar to interest on a savings account - by holding their coins.

Let’s talk about the state of the crypto market as of February 2023, and the most important things happening.

JPMorgan, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world, estimates that the arrival of the next Ethereum upgrade, codenamed Shanghai, will bring more investors to stake their funds in the protocol. The firm believes that this number might reach 60% of the ether issued, a number already staked in other blockchain networks.

After crypto exchange Kraken announced the closure of its staking service, the onus is now on the 1.23 million ETH staked assets belonging to users. The exchange said the unstaking would only be allowed after the upcoming Shanghai upgrade. The SEC’s crackdown on Kraken had huge repercussions in the crypto market after the settlement led to a price fall. The impact was more so in the proof of stake based cryptocurrencies, as the SEC’s resistance to crypto staking directly impacts these tokens.

Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, scheduled for mid-March, will raise the blockchain’s staking ratio in the medium term, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Wednesday.

Ethereum has witnessed much healthier on-chain activity recently, with improved interest in non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) led by the launch of a mini-game by Yuga Labs, Bernstein said in a research report Monday.

Public testnet launched before Shanghai upgrade activation. There was an increased interest from validators in the Ethereum ecosystem.

The upcoming Shanghai hard fork (EIP-4895) on the Ethereum network, set for March 2023, aims to unlock a significant amount of staked Ethereum (“ETH”), which currently makes up more than 13% of the total supply of Ethereum.