Ethereum has activated staking testing on its main network through a shadow fork, which represents a historic milestone for the operation of the blockchain.
The future of Ethereum is approaching, a few hours ago, a shadow fork (shadow fork, i.e. an exact copy of the network) on the Beacon Chain to begin testing the Change of consensus mechanism to Proof of Stake.
La shadow fork allows the development team Start network stress testing, which will be used to analyze possible system errors with the upcoming “merge” and the implementation of Ethereum 2.0. The team will use this split network to see how the merger will work.
According to the developers, the shadow fork is working well, with only a few minor glitches detected on the Nevermind and Bisu testnets.
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However, the main difference of this shadow fork With other test networks, it is that share all information with the original network, so developers can work as if they were working on the original Ethereum network.
How does the shadow fork from Ethereum?
According to Jayanthi Paritosh, the developer in charge of the shadow fork, the unfolded network allows the main network to be imitated, but can work in shorter periods of time.
In this way, until the day of the “Merge” arrives, Ethereum developers will create different shadow fork to work on and will destroy them when the tests are over.
This first fork has its own block explorer which shows the status of the network in real time, allowing any user to review how the fusion tests are working.
According to the data from this browser, they have already been validated More than two million transactionsThere are also over one million registered addresses and over 14 million blocks, each with a production time of 13,1 seconds.
Ethereum 2.0 is getting closer
As announced on the Ethereum.org website, the merger should take place during the 2022 second quarterWith the date drawing ever closer, developers have had to speed up their pace to meet the deadlines proposed to the community.
Marius Van Der Wijden, one of the developers of the Ethereum Foundation The head of the merger is optimistic about the development and has noted that the timelines outlined in the roadmap are being followed. In this regard, he noted that the technical aspects related to the merger have already been added, in a first stage, to the main Ethereum client, Geth, which runs on more than 80% of active nodes.
Other developers have Speculation that the merger will take place in June, taking advantage of the launch of a new difficulty bomb, which was rescheduled in December of last year for mid-2022.
What does Ethereum 2.0 mean?
Ethereum works with a Proof of Work consensus mechanism, based on mining, with a very high energy consumption. This has caused a lot of criticism and concern from a large part of the community.
For some time now, Ethereum developers and community have raised the need to change the consensus mechanism to a Proof of Stake, a system that uses staking to keep the network secure, which requires much less energyThe community calls this change “The Merge” as it implies that Ethereum mainnet will merge with the “Beacon Chain”, which will be the nerve center of the new Ethereum 2.0, constantly scanning and validating data.
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