Ethereum ready for The Merge, latest shadow fork successfully completed

Ethereum developers have successfully completed the Shadow Fork Merge without any client incompatibility issues.

Next week or in about three days, The Merge is expected to be implemented and Ethereum will move from proof of work (PoW) to proof of participation (PoS). According to Ethereum developers, before the Paris upgrade, programmers successfully completed the 13th and final shadow fork.

The merge, shadow forks help developers test timing assumptions to ensure network security

Indeed, on Friday, social media was abuzz with discussions about the transition of The Merge and Ethereum from PoW to PoS. Additionally, ETH developers and Ethereum research and engineering firm Nethermind revealed that the latest shadow fork is now complete.

Basically, a shadow fork is an upgrade applied to the existing version of Ethereum’ s main network, and the public, in general, is not aware of the testing phase.

Shadow forks help developers test timing assumptions to ensure network security during permanent upgrades. In light of The Merge, Ethereum developers implemented the first shadow fork on April 11, 2022.

Nearly six months later, Ethereum research and engineering firm Nethermind confirmed that the transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 – the last shadow fork – had been successful, signaling that the network was ready to migrate to a proof-of-participation (PoS) consensus mechanism.

MSF13 merged earlier today, we saw the attestation rate drop to -97%,” an Ethereum developer wrote after the shadow fork. This was due to stale data on a node that I forgot to delete, the node thought it was on the wrong shadow fork. No other client incompatibility issues were found.

All of this means that the merge is ready, and the entities that run are ready. The countdown is already on, it’s D-3.