Ethereum proves Merge ready as final network test completes successfully

The highly anticipated blockchain upgrade for the Ethereum ecosystem, the Merge, has gone through its last stage of assessment before the big crypto event comes true. The success of the final shadow fork of Ethereum, has officially been confirmed by Ethereum (ETH) developers. 

A shadow fork is basically an upgrade applied to the existing version of Ethereum's mainnet, and is not revealed publicly till its last stage of approval and official confirmation.  

Shadow forks help developers ensure the safety of a network during permanent upgrades. The first shadow fork for the Ethereum Merge had taken place on Apr. 11, 2022.

84% of Ethereum’s nodes are Merge Ready, according to data from EtherNodes. That being said, the exact date for the Merge is set on Sept 15. 

According to a Tweet by Nethermind, Ethereum research and engineering company, all Ethereum nodes were successfully transmitted to Mainnet-Shadowfork-13.

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“Transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 (the last shadow fork before The Merge) was successful for all Nethermind nodes!”

Merge is a highly-complex process that has been developed over years of research and development. 

Last week, during the Bellatrix upgrade, 25.2% of Ethereum’s nodes didn't upgrade their software. The number however, lowered to 15.4%, per Ethernodes, at the time of writing. 

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With the successful outcome of Ethereum’s last upgrade, the shadow fork, developers have continually mentioned that the merge will go exactly as planned. Nonetheless, the whole purpose of these tests could be to give developers some relief.