The Ethereum blockchain completed its “Shapella” upgrade on Wednesday evening, allowing users who locked up Ether tokens to support the network to withdraw their cryptocurrency for the first time.

The upgrade happened at 6:27 p.m. EDT when the Shanghai and Capella forks happened simultaneously — hence the merging of the names into Shapella – and each upgraded a different portion of the network.

This is the first major upgrade to Ethereum since the blockchain switched from “proof of work” to “proof of stake” during a massive update known as the Merge. Proof of work requires lots of computational power as multiple machines compete against one another to solve complex puzzles to validate network transactions, whereas proof of stake only requires network participants to “stake,” or lock up, their tokens in order to perform validation.

One major drawback of PoW validation is the massive energy consumption required for its performance. Part of the impetus behind switching from PoW to PoS to secure the Ethereum blockchain was to reduce its energy footprint and it was predicted that it would reduce its energy consumption by 99%.

The Merge went live on Sept. 15, but Ether staking has been live for more than 28 months as part of the transition. During that time participants could lock up their tokens and receive cryptocurrency rewards for staking their tokens, but they could not withdraw them until the recent upgrade. Since the ability to stake Ether went live in 2020, stakers deposited more than $36 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. Those stakers must now make the decision on what to do with their rewards and initial stakes of 32 ETH.

Several cryptocurrency exchanges have already announced the ability to process and sell staked ETH. Coinbase Global Inc., the world’s first publicly listed crypto exchange, announced immediately after the upgrade that staking was live on its platform, and BitGo Inc.’s Chief Operating Officer Chen Fang also announced that ETH withdrawals were available on the platform.

Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, said it would support staking withdrawals starting on April 19. However, it added that withdrawal requests would take up to 15 days to several weeks “due to processing limitations.”

Kraken began automatically unstaking ETH on its platform as soon as the upgrade happened and returning it to validators. That was part of its settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February to shut down its crypto asset staking program.

As stakers begin to withdraw their ETH, it’s expected there will be some market volatility, but the unstaking process is designed to be slow, with a daily limit designed in. Since the upgrade happened, Ethereum’s market price has risen by 4.12%, to $1,998, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

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