Next week, or approximately four days from now The Merge will be implemented. Ethereum will then transition from proof of work (PoW), to proof-of stake (PoS) in the next week. According to Ethereum developers, prior to the Paris upgrade, programmers successfully completed the 13th and last shadow fork.
Ethereum’s 13th and Last Shadow Fork Is Complete
Social media was buzzing with talk about The Merge, Ethereum’s transition to PoW from PoS on Friday. Furthermore, ETH developers and the Ethereum research and engineering company Nethermind revealed the last shadow fork is now complete. A shadow fork is basically an upgrade to the current version of Ethereum’s mainnet. The public is not aware of this testing phase.
So far, with the last shadow fork, ETH developers have executed 13 successful shadow forks. “Transition in Mainnet-Shadow fork-13 (the last shadow fork before The Merge) was successful for all Nethermind nodes,” the researchers from Nethermind said on Friday. To aid in testing, there is a shadow network scanner, a shadow mainnet explorer and a shadow web Beacon Chain Explorer.
Bitcoin.com reported on the pre-Merge upgrade called Bellatrix on September 6, which was the final pre-Merge transition before the Paris Upgrade. Paris will activate The Merge. After the last PoW block has been mined, an Ethereum validator shall mine the next block. If that block is successfully mined by a validator, The Merge will be 100% complete.
“MSF13 merged earlier today, we saw attestation rate drop to -97%,” an Ethereum developer wrote after the shadow fork. “This was due a stale node data that I didn’t clear up, it thought it was on a wrong shadow fork. No other issues with client compatibility were observed
With the shadow fork completing successfully on Friday, it signals the readiness for The Merge, and entities running ETH software will need to upgrade. While some people celebrated the shadow fork, others criticized Ethereum and called it “centralized.” On Saturday, following the 13th shadow fork, the test was discussed a great deal on social media channels like Twitter and Reddit.
The Merge will execute when the network hits a Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) value on the execution layer, which will be 58750000000000000000000. This is estimated to happen on September 14, 2022, or roughly four days from when this post was written.
This story contains tags
13th Shadow Fork, Beacon Chain, Beacon Chain validators, Bellatrix upgrade, Block Production, Code, Codebase, ETH dominance, Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Developers, Final Shadow Fork, Last Shadow Fork, Nethermind, Paris Upgrade, PoS, PoW, ruleset change, Shadow fork, Software, technology, The Merge, The Merge transition, Vitalik Buterin
What do you think about the completion of the 13th shadow fork and the upcoming Paris upgrade? Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on this topic.
Jamie Redman
Jamie Redman, the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News, is a Florida-based financial journalist. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. Redman is passionate about Bitcoin, open-source codes, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.
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