Second Mainnet Shadow Fork Test Will Begin on Saturday-Ethereum Developer

It's a significant step forward as Ethereum developers draw closer to switching the mainnet's consensus methodology from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.

A "shadow fork" is copying data from a mainnet network, the Ethereum blockchain, to a testnet, where developers can test features before publishing them to the leading network. As a result, Ethereum engineers have made their test environment more similar to the mainnet, which processes more than 1 billion daily transactions.

The developers of the world's second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum, continue transitioning the backing network to a proof-of-stake (PoS) model.

The shadow fork is a technique to "put our synchronization and state growth assumptions to the test." According to Parithosh Jayanthi, an Ethereum Foundation developer, it will provide a means to test if the assumptions operate on existing testnets and mainnet.

Ethereum has been developing a multi-stage transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm to replace the current proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism. Transactions will be validated by nodes run by "stakers" rather than "miners" in the PoS model. The switch is intended to drastically lower the energy required to run the network, which is a significant source of contention for the Bitcoin network based on the proof-of-work algorithm.