Ethereum mainnet shadow fork 10 is now officially live. Another little but significant step has been made by Ethereum toward the merge, the blockchain’s much-discussed and frequently postponed switch to proof of stake.
The 10th shadow fork of Ethereum, which was supposed to go live the day before yesterday, went online earlier, more than 26 hours ahead of time.
Shadow forks are a targeted test run of the merge’s components; they simulate making one or two particular modifications to the blockchain that will take place in the future.
Ethereum shadow forks are different from hard forks
This is separate from complete testnet hard forks, like the Sepolia testnet that happened earlier this month. The merge, which turns the entire Ethereum mainnet into a test environment network, has been extensively tested on testnets.
The shadow split this week acted as a practice run for the releases scheduled for August 11 on Ethereum’s last testnet, Goerli.
This test will be the third and last of its kind needed before the merge is prepared to go into effect.
Over the past two years, there have been various changes made to the merge’s schedule. However, Ethereum core developers stated earlier this month that they planned to release the merge on September 19.
Developers are confident that this timeline will (more or less) stay as there is only one significant event left before then, the Goerli testnet.
ETH network which powers around 64% of all decentralized finance (DeFi) activity, will go from a proof-of-work methodology to a proof-of-stake model as a result of the merger.
At the moment, new ETH is produced through a resource-intensive process in which so-called “miners” devote enormous amounts of computational power to resolving challenging riddles in the hopes of earning blocks of new ETH.
The proof-of-stake architecture will make the ETH network 99 percent more environmentally friendly.