Ethereum developers have launched a new shadow fork on the Goerli testnet, which will be deployed to the mainnet in the coming days, to continue moving towards the merger between Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0.
This week, Ethereum developers will give rise to two new hard fork on the network, which will allow them to detect possible errors to continue advancing towards Ethereum 2.0.
The first hard fork was implements this Tuesday, April 19, as a shadow fork on the Goerli testnet. Later, on April 23, this hard fork will be implemented on the Ethereum mainnet.
The blockchain developers explain that the new hard fork will allow them to test the behavior and stability of the mainnet in the merger, to detect possible errors and define whether it is safe to advance towards the Ethereum consensus layer; as Ethereum 2.0 was named at the beginning of this year by the Foundation and the network developers.
The shadow fork allows developers to perform specific tests on the mainnet without compromising its security, since it is a copy of the main network that is destroyed when the tests are completed.
If the tests are successful, as previous updates and forks have done so far, Ethereum developers will be able to set a date for the arrival of the new Proof of Stake network (PoS), which will make block mining obsolete and give rise to a highly scalable and energy-efficient network.
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In the final chapter of block mining on Ethereum
Ethereum developer Tim Beiko tweeted that although the merger between Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 was again delayed until after June, the team is in the final stage of developing the new network.
According to Beiko, “we are definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum.”
Ethereum 2.0 will displace block miners, which operate on the consensus mechanism, to Proof of Work (PoW), resulting in a blockchain with less energy dependence and, therefore, more efficient and sustainable.
The new Ethereum network, based on the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, will be able to support thousands of transactions per second, making applications and protocols run faster and with lower commission fees, while ensuring environmental friendliness by consuming less energy and computing power.
Ethereum will achieve all this after the merger of both chains, the current PoW-based Ethereum and the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain that runs in parallel to the mainnet, without sacrificing decentralization or security.
According to the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, it is possible that the merger, called “The Merge”, will arrive sometime between the third and fourth quarter of this year.
Continue reading: Irreversibility in transactions: Vitalik Buterin presents proposal for Ethereum 2.0
