Following months of planning, the Ethereum community has reportedly managed to establish a timeline for its anticipated Berlin upgrade – a significant milestone achieved in its overall development roadmap. 

Specifically, the scheduled time for Berlin’s official release across the Ethereum mainnet at block 12,244,000 will be on the 14th of April. Ropsten – the first testnet to receive an upgrade, is scheduled for March 10th. 

The upgrading process for The Goerli and Rinkeby networks is reportedly expected to be finalized within one week, with starting date to be March 17 and March 24, respectively. 

It is reportedly advisable for Ethereum node operators to upgrade to a Berlin-compatible version at their earliest convenience for the three testnets, and the deadline for the mainnet will be by April 7. 

“Ethereum node operators should upgrade their nodes prior to the fork block on the networks they want to participate in. Due to block time variability, it is recommended to update several days before the expected date.”

There is reportedly no requirement regarding the accommodation of the upgrade from Exchanges, wallet service providers and Ether (ETH) token holders.

The implementation of the overall number of four Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs) will reportedly be finalized through Berlin, including: 

EIP-2565, which lowers the cost of the ModExp precompile

EIP-2929, which increases certain gas costs

EIP-2718, which introduces a new transaction type

EIP-2930, which includes a transaction type with optional access lists.

Berlin is reportedly rolled out after the Istanbul and Muir Glacier upgrades, which occurred in December 2019 and January 2020, respectively. The Berlin upgrade reportedly received its name from Devcon 1, which took place in Berlin.