Ethereum developers begin finalizing Shanghai update for testing and bug identification

Ethereum developers have begun finalizing the “shadow fork” of the Shanghai upgrade, according to software engineer Marius van der Wijden. The “shadow fork“will serve as a test environment for the Shanghai upgrade, allowing developers to identify bugs and any other potential problems.

Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade (Shadow Fork) Launched

As the crypto-currency community awaits the next Shanghai hard fork, Ethereum’s core developers have launched a test environment called “shadow fork” in order to test the upgrade. This follows the developers’ announcement that they will launch a new testnet for the Shanghai upgrade on January 11, 2023. The fork, which will focus on allowing token withdrawals, is expected to take place in March 2023.

Withdrawal-Mainnet-Shadow-Fork-1 is finalizing 🚀🚀🚀

It started out with a few issues because the config wasn’t correctly applied on geth (we disallow overriding the mainnet config). The config is applied correctly and all nodes are in agreement. We will start some evil nodes,.

– MariusVanDerWijden (@vdWijden) January 23, 2023

According to Marius van der Wijden, a software developer at the Ethereum Foundation, there have been some problems with the “shadow fork” which began around 6 a.m. Eastern time on Monday morning. “It started with some problems because the configuration was not correctly applied on Geth (we do not allow the replacement of the main network configuration) “, said Mr. van der Wijden on Twitter. The developer added:

For now, the chain is finalizing properly, let’s see if Potuz and I can break it.

The crypto-currency community is concerned about Beacon chain withdrawals, as there are 16,167,527 withdrawals from the Beacon chain. ETH stored in the validator contract which is currently locked. Only a hard fork can unlock the funds put into play and the Shanghai upgrade is intended to pave the way towards this goal of Beaconscan.com show that there are 504,765 validators, with the number of validators having crossed the 500,000 area this year.

About 130 days have passed since The Merge, when Ethereum moved from a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. The Shanghai upgrade will be the next major hard fork after The Merge. In addition to allowing withdrawals from the Beacon chain, the developers are exploring ways to reduce gas costs for withdrawals as well. The public testnet of the Shanghai upgrade is expected to be launched in the near future, giving the general public an opportunity to test the functionality of the new software.