New Milestone in ETH PoS Testing with First-Ever “Shadow Fork”

On Monday, Ethereum developers implemented the network’s first-ever “shadow fork”. This marks an important milestone in the project’s ongoing transition to implement a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus.

As a result of the soft fork, developers now have an avenue to stress test their assumptions around the network’s complex shift in consensus, according to Parithosh Jayanthi, an Ethereum Foundation developer.

Jayanthi tweeted on Sunday, “The aim of the Kiln merge testnet was to allow the community to practice running their nodes, deploying contracts, testing infrastructure, etc.”

Kiln is the last testnet of the merge, and includes shifting Ethereum’s Execution Layer from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). The Ethereum Foundation described the merge in a blog post on 14 March as a “culmination of six years of research and development”, with the aim of increasing the network’s energy efficiency while making it more secure.

Marius van der Wijden, another Ethereum Foundation developer, confirmed on Monday that the testing of the PoS migration was underway, according to a tweet he made which said: “Today will be the first mainnet shadow fork ever. We’re roughly 690 blocks (~2 h) away from TTD”.

The latest developments surrounding the merge has fueled an increasingly bullish narrative for Ethereum, which has seen the price of Ether (ETH) temporarily break the current downtrend seen in the cryptocurrency markets.

Despite the current slump in the cryptocurrency market, investor interest has returned to the Ethereum project as the prospect of earning passive income on the network slowly becomes a reality.