Key Takeaways
- Galaxy Digital’s analyst Christine Kim stated that the last “shadow fork” ahead of Ethereum Merge wasn’t successful owing to problems with node synchronization.
- The next mainnet shadow fork is tentatively planned around the first week of July.
Galaxy Digital’s analyst Christine Kim took to Twitter to share details of Ethereum’s latest All Core Devs Call #141 meeting results and the next steps on road to The Merge.
According to the thread, the last “shadow fork” wasn’t successful owing to problems with node synchronization. Kim stated that around 20% of nodes dropped off right at Merge activation and more nodes dropped off thereafter.
Further, some problems were identified regarding the “Bonsai Trees” data storage design and Nethermind-Teku client pair. These problems pointed out that the participating teams are not ready for the upcoming upgrade. Kim continued that the drop-off was caused by issues that arose from the Erigon and Hyperledger Besu nodes.
In Ethereum’s latest ACD meeting, Justin Florentine from the Besu team stated that they’ve been aware of a concurrency bug with nodes using bonsai tries since as early as April but have struggled with implementing a fix to the known issue. This bug led to 25% of the network validator to pack up as one-quarter of them run the Besu software.
The first “shadow forks” were activated on the Ethereum (ETH) network in mid-April 2022. Kim stated that the next mainnet shadow fork is tentatively planned around the first week of July. Ahead of the next fork, all teams are expected to have been ordered to fix the issues affecting the exercise. Sharing the timeline for the next crucial event in pre-Merge preparations, i.e., its activation in the Sepolia testnet, Kim stated that the Devs are “optimistic” about launching The Merge on the second major test network(Sepolia) on July 6, 2022.
