- On Tuesday, a shadow fork of the Ethereum mainnet went live, bringing it a step closer to its transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism from proof of work (PoW) for the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.
- As of last year, the last stage of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, the Beacon Chain, went live, while “The merge”, the last stage, is expected to complete by the early third quarter of 2022 or June.
- “The Merge” is the fusion of the new PoS-based Beacon chain and the existing PoW-based Ethereum Mainnet. The last stage will mark the Ethereum mining end.
Currently, the Ethereum Foundation is in the process of a multi-stage migration to the PoS algorithm that enables validators to generate blocks by staking assets rather than mining.
Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) warrants the exceptionally reduced consumption, which would lead to less greenhouse gas emissions that would need an annual offset by a forest approximately the size of Belgium.
Developers test the upgrade before deploying it on the mainnet through a shadow fork.
The transition to the PoS consensus algorithm aims to exponentially reduce the cut-down energy requirements and increase the scalability of Ethereum.
Last year, the first phase of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, the Beacon Chain, became functional, while the next stage, The Merge, is scheduled to reach its completion by the early third quarter of 2022 or June.
On Tuesday, the shadow fork explorer site was down at Midday Asia time. Still, by early morning with an average block generation time of around 13.8 seconds, the network had processed approx. 1.8 million transactions.
At the time of the trial merge of Ethereum on the Kiln testnet, Prysm, one of its clients, had faced a problem in block proposals; however, the error was resolved ultimately, leading to a successful merge.
Kiln adheres to the Kintsugi merge testnet, which will eventually be phased out in the next few weeks.
“The Merge” is the amalgamation of the new PoS-based Beacon chain and the existing PoW-based Ethereum Mainnet, with the last stage marking the Ethereum mining end.
At the time of writing, since the Beacon chain has launched, over 10.4 million Ether has been staked for Ethereum 2.0.
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Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/04/12/ethereum-mainnets-shadow-fork-went-live-a-step-closer-to-its-transition-to-pos-mechanism/