Ethereum developers carried out a shadow fork of the mainnet

Ethereum developers carried out a shadow fork of the mainnet to stress-test the process of merging blockchains as part of the transition to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm.

The merge pandas have arrived!
mainnet-shadow-fork-1 hit TTD ~half an hour ago. We’ve been finalizing and producing blocks!

We quickly noticed some seemingly minor issues with Nethermind and Besu(triage ongoing). Erigon is currently syncing to head, status update later. https://t.co/iJFtZTp7UU pic.twitter.com/9GxPp8dFzs

— parithosh | 🐼👉👈🐼 (@parithosh_j) April 11, 2022

“We are finalising the network and producing blocks,” wrote Parithosh Jayanthi of the Ethereum Foundation.

According to him, there were “some issues” with the Nethermind and Besu clients, and Erigon needed to be synchronised.

Jayanthi warned that some transactions may appear in both chains due to information exchange.

This was the first time we attempted a mainnet-shadow-fork, we were expecting to learn a lot from the transition! The next week or so would be spent with sync tests against this fork and trying to trigger more edge cases.

We plan on repeating it next week, for advanced users 😉

— parithosh | 🐼👉👈🐼 (@parithosh_j) April 11, 2022

“We were the first to attempt to create a shadow fork of the mainnet and expected to learn a lot! The next week or so we would spend on synchronization tests with the fork and attempts to trigger more edge cases,” noted Jayanthi.

Earlier, developers tested the solution several times on the Goerli test network.

Tim Beiko, one of the Ethereum team’s leading specialists, said the results of the shadow fork would be crucial in determining the timing of the merge, Christine Kim of Galaxy Digital Research reported.

Next Monday, devs are planning to shadow fork Ethereum mainnet to test the Merge. @TimBeiko emphasized the outcome of this shadow fork will be important to deciding Merge timing.

— Christine Kim (@christine_dkim) April 7, 2022

Co-founder Joseph Lubin predicted the launch second iteration of the network in the second or third quarter of 2022.