Decentralized Ethereum staking protocol Rocket Pool is targeting a mainnet Atlas release for end of March / early April according to an announcement published by Rocket Pool founder David Rugendyke.

Rocket Pool has announced its next major upgrade, Atlas, which is the protocol's second major upgrade since launching to mainnet. The previous upgrade was Redstone, which made the protocol compatible with The Merge and introduced some extra special features such as the smoothing pool.

The Atlas upgrade makes the protocol compatible with Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade, which will allow validators to initiate withdrawals of their staked ETH on the Beacon Chain. The upgrade also introduces many new improvements, including gas optimizations and major architecture changes aimed at scaling Rocket Pool.

Both Sigma Prime and ConsenSys Diligence have conducted audits on the Atlas release, spending a total of 6 weeks reviewing the code and producing a comprehensive list of findings.

The Atlas upgrade was a large undertaking by the team and community, resulting from listening to wants and ideas, conducting a huge amount of analysis, and hard work. Before delving deep into the changes, the announcement provides a quick rundown of what Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade entails. Rocket Pool aims to take off like never before with the help of these changes.