The merger is one step closer, and the key Ethereum mainnet shadow fork 2 that affects the merger is going smoothly

The Merge with Proof of Stake (PoS) will be the most profound upgrade to Ethereum to date, second only to the genesis block in importance. It will be an example for the world to see how a major, decentralized system can actually eliminate its carbon footprint. One of the keys to influencing the Merge is the test of the Ethereum mainnet shadow fork. After the first Ethereum mainnet shadow fork test on April 11, the Ethereum mainnet shadow fork 2 went smoothly on April 23. (Note: Shadow fork refers to adding merge-related fields to the network to fork in order to simulate stress testing in the existing network environment.)

On April 11, Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden said on Twitter that PoS is currently being tested on Ethereum and will conduct the first mainnet shadow fork. Subsequently, Ethereum's first mainnet shadow fork was officially launched.

Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi said shadow forks are a way to “stress test assumptions about synchronization and state growth” and that it will also provide “a way to check if our assumptions hold true on existing testnets and/or mainnet.” Jayanthi warned that shadow forks will share some data with the main ethereum network, so some transactions may appear on both chains.

Ethereum developer Tim Beiko said that the result of the shadow fork is the key to determining the final merge time. The merge date will only be determined when the client team is confident that the software implementation has been thoroughly tested and there are no errors. At the same time, Tim Beiko also pointed out that as of April 2022, all client teams are conducting merge implementations, including the launch of new test networks and testing of shadow forks. Among them, the shadow forks running against existing test networks and Ethereum mainnets have revealed client implementation problems. The team is now fixing these problems and will regularly re-run shadow forks to test the fixes. Subsequently, Tim Beiko tweeted that it is strongly recommended not to invest more in mining equipment at this time. (Ethereum merger) will not be completed in June, but may be a few months later. There is no confirmed date at present, but we are definitely in the final stage of Ethereum PoW and will be completed in 2022 (Ethereum merger).

According to the current progress, the Merge is one step closer and related tests are running steadily. On April 23, the chief engineer of Ethereum infrastructure development company ConsenSys tweeted that today's Ethereum mainnet shadow fork 2 went very smoothly.

The ConsenSys chief engineer further pointed out that before the merge, both Prysm and Nimbus had some problems with the large number of deposits being processed, Prysm generated blocks very late, causing many people to miss the vote, and the participation of the synchronization committee was very low. The blocks generated by Nimbus were invalid. Both of these issues were unrelated to the merge and have been fixed. Despite these problems and many delayed blocks, the actual merge went smoothly. Now that both of these issues have been resolved, we are seeing very high participation in certification and synchronization committees. This is a very healthy chain.

It is worth mentioning that with the gradual progress of shadow fork testing, Ethereum mergers have received more and more attention. Google revealed that the search volume for keywords such as "Proof of Stake" (PoS) and "Ethereum 2.0 release date" has recently increased significantly.