Ethereum Shadow Fork 10 Goes Live, One Step Closer to the Merge

Vignesh Karunanidhi
Ethereum Shadow Fork 10 Goes Live, One Step Closer to the Merge
Source: Payments Journal

The tenth shadow fork goes live, as the Ethereum network achieves another milestone, bringing it one step closer to the final merge. The network has gone through multiple test forks as part of its final merge testing.

In order to prepare for the final merge, several tests are being performed. A hard fork and a shadow fork are quite dissimilar. A shadow fork mostly assesses and tests a few small modifications that ultimately result in the final merge.

On July 6, the network had just finished the Ethereum Sepolia test run. The Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) enhancement feature was the major emphasis of the most recent shadow fork 9, which went live on July 14, 2022.

The mainnet shadow fork went live 26 hours earlier than anticipated. The current shadow fork occurred at 11:45 UTC yesterday.

Ethereum’s Goerli testnet merge is likely to happen on August 10

The current shadow fork brings the network one step closer to the final testnet merge, Goerli. The Goerli merge is expected to occur on August 10. According to Paritosh Jayanthu, Ethereum DevOps Engineer, the reason for the earlier occurrence than expected could be due to the change in hashrate. “This shadow fork will test releases that approximate the releases that will be used in the Goerli merge,” added Paritosh.

The current shadowfork didn’t display any potential glitches. Further shadow forks will be deployed until the final merge.

The transition from PoW to PoS will change everything about how things operate. The change will make the network more affordable, quick, and energy-efficient. Different rules apply to proof-of-stake than proof-of-work. Miners will be replaced by validators. To maintain the network’s functionality, validators either lock up or stake ETH.

The final merge is anticipated to go live in September if everything works accordingly as planned.