As per a January 23 Twitter thread by a developer of Go-Ethereum, Marius Van Der Wijden, developers have developed a test environment known as a “shadow fork” as the date set for the Shanghai Update of Ethereum approaches. The purpose of the new test network, which is now disabled but will be activated in the upgrade, appears to aim to evaluate the requirements for withdrawals of Ether (ETH) staking.
Testnet Withdrawal-Mainnet-Shadow-Fork-1 is what it’s called. A “shadow fork” of the mainnet is a fork of the network that is only meant to be used for testing, according to Alchemy, a node provider for Web3.
All To See If They Can Break The Test Network With Ether Withdrawals
According to Van Der Wijden as well as a different developer who goes by “Potuz,” rogue nodes will be created that send fraudulent messages and blocks to other testnet nodes in an effort to persuade them to adopt a fake copy of the network. The network will now function without any issues, but Van Der Wijden has said he wishes to try and break it along with Potuz.
This testnet was launched as a result of the developers’ increasing desire to make staking withdrawals on Ether a reality. They met on January 6 and decided to forego including the proposed EOF (EVM Object Format) in the Shanghai upgrade. The goal of EOF would have been to make additional Ethereum upgrades simpler. However, the developers chose to omit it from Shanghai due to its difficulty for concern that it might delay the execution of the removal.
As per a study from Decemberby Nansen, more than 14.5Mn ETH (valued over $23Bn when the article is being written) have been committed into the staking contract of Ethereum and are not currently available for withdrawal.
