The Ethereum development team completed the final shadow-fork test (shadow-fork-13) on Sept 9, 2022, before the Ethereum Merge which is scheduled to happen on or before the 19th of September. This indeed marks a remarkable moment in the history of Ethereum and DeFi.
Keynotes
- Ethereum developers confirm the success of the last shadow fork on Sept 9, 2022.
- The Merge will decrease the Ethereum energy consumption by ~99.95%.
- Alexander Höptner, CEO of BitMEX advises Ethereum against downtimes.
What is Shadow Fork?
Shadow forks basically mean carrying out a series of stress tests for specific aspects of The Merge; It entails making a major change to the blockchain that will be implemented later on. The first shadow-fork was carried out on April 11, 2022.
With over five months in, Ethereum research and engineering company, Nethermind released a memo on its Twitter handle that the “Transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 (the last shadow-fork before The Merge) was successful for all Nethermind nodes!🐼💪”
This shows the readiness of the network for migrating from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. The testnet enabled Ethereum developers, to test the whole infrastructure some of which include deploying Smart contracts, and running Nodes, among other things.
In an interview carried out by the local media the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, Alexander Höptner emphasized the importance of paying close attention during the Ethereum update to prevent service downtimes.
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