Ethereum developers have begun finalizing the “shadow fork” of the Shanghai update, according to software engineer Marius van der Wijden. The “shadow fork” will serve as a testing environment for the Shanghai update, allowing developers to identify bugs and any potential issues.
Launch of Ethereum ‘Shadow Fork’ update in Shanghai
As the cryptocurrency community awaits the upcoming Shanghai hard fork, Ethereum core developers have released a test environment called “shadow fork” to test the upgrade. This follows the developers’ announcement of launching a new testnet for the Shanghai Update on January 11, 2023. The hard fork, which will focus on allowing staking withdrawals, is anticipated to occur in March 2023.
According to Marius van der Wijden, a software developer at the Ethereum Foundation, there were some issues with the “shadow fork” that started at approximately 6am ET on Monday morning. “Started with some issues because the settings were not applied correctly in Geth (we don’t allow overriding the mainnet settings)” – van der Wijden wrote On twitter. the developer aggregate:
For now the chain is ending correctly, let’s see if Potuz and I can break it.
The cryptocurrency community has been concerned about the withdrawals from the Beacon chain, as there are 16,167,527 ETH stored inside the validating contract which is currently locked. Only a hard fork can unlock the staked funds and the Shanghai update is meant to pave the way towards that goal. Statistics from Beaconscan.com show there are 504,765 validators, as the validator count crossed the 500,000 zone this year.
It’s been roughly 130 days since The Merge, when Ethereum transitioned from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. The Shanghai Update will be the next big fork after The Merge. In addition to allowing withdrawals from the Beacon chain, the developers are also exploring ways to reduce gas costs for withdrawals. The public testnet for the Shanghai Update will be launched in the near future, giving the general public an opportunity to test the features of the new software.
What do you think about Ethereum developers using a “shadow fork” to test and identify bugs before the mainnet release of the Shanghai Update? How do you think the upgrade will affect the Ethereum community and the locked funds? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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