The highly anticipated Ethereum transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) is just round the corner. Prior to the merge, Ethereum developers have successfully completed their 13th and final shadow fork.
Social media was a hive of activity on Friday as people discussed The Merge and Ethereum’s switch from PoW to PoS. Furthermore, the final shadow fork has been completed, according to ETH developers and the Ethereum research and engineering firm Nethermind.
What is Ethereum’s Shadow Fork?
In essence, a shadow fork is an upgrade made to the current Ethereum mainnet, and the public is unaware of the testing stage.
13 Shadow Forks before the main Ethereum transition
With the most recent shadow fork, ETH engineers have successfully completed 13 shadow forks thus far. On Friday, Nethermind said that the 13th and final shadow fork was successful and hence complete. Furthermore, the company said that to assist the testing they even used shadow net scanner, a shadow net Mainnet explorer and a shadow net Beacon Chain explorer.
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Earlier on September 6, the pre-merge upgrade called Bellatrix was the last pre-merge transition before Paris upgrade. This upgrade will trigger the merge and after the final Proof-of-Work block is mined, an ETH validator will mine the following block. The merge will be considered complete when that block is successfully mined by a validator.
After the shadow fork, an Ethereum developer wrote, “MSF13 merged earlier today, we saw attestation rate plummet to -97%.” The node believed it was on the incorrect shadow fork as a result of some stale data on one node that I neglected to wipe up. There were no other client compatibility problems.
The successful completion of the shadow fork on Friday indicates that The Merge is ready to take place, and any entities still using ETH software will need to update. While some people praised the shadow fork, others decried Ethereum as being “centralized” and attacked it. Following the 13th shadow fork on Saturday, there was a lot of discussion about the test on platforms like Reddit & Twitter.
When the network reaches a Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) value on the execution layer, which will be 58750000000000000000000, the merge will be put into action. On September 14, 2022, or about 3 days from the time this post was written, this is anticipated to occur.
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