According to software engineer Marius van der Wijden, Ethereum developers have begun finalizing the “shadow fork” of the Shanghai upgrade. The “shadow fork” will serve as a test environment for the Shanghai upgrade, allowing developers to identify bugs and any potential issues.
The “Shadow Fork” of the Shanghai upgrade of Ethereum is launched
As the cryptocurrency community awaits the upcoming Shanghai hard fork, Ethereum’s core developers have launched a test environment called a “shadow fork” to test the upgrade. This follows the developers’ announcement that they will launch a new testnet for the Shanghai upgrade on January 11, 2023. The fork, which focuses on enabling stake withdrawals, is expected to occur in March 2023.
According to Marius van der Wijden, a software developer at the Ethereum Foundation, the “shadow fork,” which began around 6 a.m. Eastern time Monday, had some issues.” It started with a few issues because the config was not correctly applied on Geth (we disallow overriding the mainnet config),” van der Wijden wrote on Twitter. the developer added,:
For now the chain is correctly finalized, let’s see if Potuz and I can break it.
The cryptocurrency community is concerned about the Beacon chain withdrawal because there are 16,167,527 ETHstored in a currently lockedvalidator contract. Only a hard fork can unlock the staked funds, meaning the Shanghai upgrade will pave the way to that goal. According to Beaconscan.com statistics, the number of validators exceeded the 500,000 zone this year with 504,765 validators.
It has been about 130 days since The Merge, when Ethereum migrated from a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. The Shanghai upgrade will be a major hard fork following The Merge, and in addition to enabling withdrawals from the Beacon chain, developers are also exploring ways to lower gas costs for withdrawals. A public testnet for the Shanghai upgrade will be launched in the near future, giving the general public the opportunity to test new software features.
What do you think about Ethereum developers using a “shadow fork” for testing and bug checking prior to the mainnet release of the Shanghai upgrade? How do you think this upgrade will affect the Ethereum community and lockstaked funds? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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