The Ethereum network has successfully completed its 13th and last shadow fork.

On Friday, there has been a lot of discussion on social media concerning The Merge and Ethereum's transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake model. In addition, developers working on Ethereum and a business that specializes in Ethereum research and engineering called Nethermind have disclosed that the final shadow fork has been finished. A shadow fork is, in its most fundamental form, an upgrade that is made to the currently operational version of Ethereum's mainnet, but the general public is not aware that the testing phase is taking place.

Since the completion of the most recent shadow fork, ETH engineers have successfully carried out a total of 13 shadow forks. The researchers working on the Nethermind blockchain said on Friday that the transition in Mainnet-Shadow fork-13, which was the final shadow fork before The Merge, was successful for all of the network's nodes. In addition, there is a shadow net scanner, as well as a shadow net mainnet explorer and a shadow net Beacon Chain explorer, all of which can be used to assist in testing.

On September 6, Bitcoin.com published an article about the pre-Merge upgrade known as Bellatrix. This upgrade was the last pre-Merge transfer that occurred before the Paris Upgrade. The Merge will be triggered by Paris, and immediately following the mining of the final Proof-of-Work block, an Ethereum validator will mine the block that comes after it. If a validator is able to successfully mine that block, then The Merge will be finished to a hundred percent.

After the shadow fork, an Ethereum engineer noted in a message that "MSF13 merged earlier today, and we saw attestation rate plummet to -97%." "This was because some old data on one node that I had forgotten to wipe away, and the node believed it was on the incorrect shadow fork as a result. There were no further instances of client incompatibility that were observed.

Since the shadow fork was successfully completed on Friday, this indicates that we are now ready for The Merge. Entities that are now running ETH software will be required to upgrade. Even while there were those who rejoiced over the shadow fork, there were also those who were critical of Ethereum and dubbed it "centralized." On Saturday, after the 13th shadow fork, there was a significant amount of conversation about the test on various social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit.

When the network reaches a Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) number on the execution layer of the algorithm, which will be 58750000000000000000000, the Merge will be carried out. According to our best estimates, this will take place on September 14, 2022, which is approximately four days after this post was written.