Developers are attempting to attack the forked testnet with malicious nodes to see if they can find vulnerabilities. News Own this piece of history Collect this article as an NFT As the proposed date for the Ethereum Shanghai update draws closer, developers have created a testing environment called a “shadow fork,” according to a Jan. 23 tweet thread by Go-Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden. The new testnet appears to have been created in order to test the conditions needed for Ether (ETH) staking withdrawals, which are currently disabled but are intended to become enabled in the update. Withdrawal-Mainnet-Shadow-Fork-1 is finalizing It started out with a few issues because the config wasn’t correctly applied on geth (we disallow overriding the mainnet config). The config is ap...
Stepping into the year 2023, it’s time to pause and reflect on the accomplishments and struggles the global crypto community witnessed over the last 365 days. Starting from the very beginning of 2022, no investment strategy could help recover the falling portfolios across traditional and crypto ecosystems. January 2022 inherited a slightly collapsing market, wherein investments made on 2021 all-time high prices resulted in immediate losses. For many, especially the new entrants, falling crypto prices were perceived as an end game. But what went widely unnoticed was the community’s resilience and accomplishments against a global recession, orchestrated attacks and scams and an unforgiving bear market. As a result of falling prices, 2022 also inherited the 2021 hype around nonfun...
Taproot support across the industry is still crawling one year after the Bitcoin soft fork, indicating a strong potential for innovation and broader adoption of Web3 solutions to be unlocked through the world’s largest cryptocurrency, sources told Cointelegraph. “Since early on, Satoshi predicted that layers being built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain would enable Bitcoin to move beyond being only sound money by adding programmability, which makes Bitcoin the optimal framework to build out Web3 capabilities,” noted Alex Miller, CEO of the Web3 developer platform Hiro. The Taproot upgrade took place in November 2021 and laid the foundation for accelerating decentralized financial services through the Bitcoin (BTC) network. It enables more efficient validation o...
Developers at the Ethereum foundation decided on eight Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) to explore for the Shanghai update, the next major upgrade after the Merge and its move to proof-of-stake consensus, announced the Ethereum Foundation on Nov. 24. On a weekly call, developers decided what features should be included in the next hard fork, which will be released in the second half of 2023. According to the Ethereum Foundation JavaScript Team on Twitter: We are happy to announce the launch of an early Pre-Shanghai testnet we are calling “Shandong”. https://t.co/1HpFTPUMOU This is an experimental testnet run in cooperation with EF DevOps which activates a set of selected Shanghai-considered EIPs for early client testing. : https://t.co/VJ4kWxupG3 — EF JavaSc...
Considering that protocol-level censorship is deterrent to the crypto ecosystem’s goal of highly open and accessible finance, the community has been keeping track of Ethereum’s growing compliance with standards laid down by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Over the last 24 hours, the Ethereum network was found to enforce OFAC compliance on over 73% of its blocks. Ethereum sporting 73% OFAC-compliant blocks. Source: mevwatch.info In Oct. 2022, Cointelegraph reported on the rising censorship concerns after 51% of Ethereum blocks were found compliant with OFAC standards. However, data from mevWatch confirmed that the minting of OFAC-compliant blocks on a daily basis has grown to 73% as of Nov. 3. Ethereum’s PFAC compliance trend. Source: mevwatch.info Some MEV-Bo...
Staked ETH withdrawal and lower gas fees are some of the developments expected with the next critical improvements for the Ethereum network, the Shanghai upgrade. The testnet version, dubbed Shandong, is now live. Developers can now begin working on the implementations; a process expected to continue until September 2023. This is the first major update since Ethereum’s consensus switched to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) in September after the Mainnet and Beacon Chains merged. Moreover, the coming upgrade introduces an elemental change to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the technology that powers the network smart contracts. EIP-3540, or EVM object format, is one of the community’s most-anticipated updates since it separates coding from data, which could be beneficial for on-...
The Merge upgrade for Ethereum (ETH), which primarily sought to transition the blockchain into a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, has been revealed to have a positive impact on the creation of new Ethereum blocks. The Merge was considered one of the most significant upgrades for Ethereum. As a result of the hype, numerous misconceptions around cheaper gas fees and faster transactions plagued the crypto ecosystem, which was debunked by Cointelegraph. However, some of the evident improvements experienced by the blockchain post-Merge include a steep increase in daily block creation and a substantial decrease in average block time. Ethereum blocks per day. Source: YCharts On Sept. 15, Ethereum completed The Merge upgrade after successfully transitioning the network to PoS. On the same...
Ethereum (ETH) developers confirmed the successful completion of the prerequisites — shadow forks — required for the highly anticipated blockchain upgrade, The Merge. Shadow forks help developers stress test synchronization assumptions to ensure network safety during permanent upgrades. In light of The Merge, Ethereum developers implemented the first shadow fork on Apr. 11, 2022. Nearly six months in, Ethereum research and engineering company Nethermind confirmed that the transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 — the last shadow fork — was successful, signaling the readiness of the network for migrating to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 (the last shadowfork before The Merge) was successful for all Nethermind nodes!#TheMerge #Ethereum #Neth...
Just when the Ethereum ecosystem reached its final stages in preparing for the much-anticipated upgrade, The Merge, german cloud provider Hetzner, reiterated its stance against allowing mining operations for both proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof-of-work (PoW) applications. Hetzner, a private, centralized cloud provider, stepped in on a discussion around running blockchain nodes, highlighting its terms of services that prohibit customers from using the services for crypto activities. However, the Ethereum community perceived the revelation as a threat to the ecosystem as Hetzner’s cloud services host nearly 16% of the Ethereum nodes, as shown below. Ethereum Mainnet Statistics. Source: ethernodes.org In crypto, the reliance on centralized service providers has been historically perceived...
The excitement around Ethereum’s (ETH) upcoming upgrade, The Merge, which involves the merger of two blockchains — Mainnet Ethereum and Beacon Chain — has unknowingly spurred rumors across the community. Termed the most significant upgrade in the history of Ethereum, The Merge does indeed mark the end of proof-of-work (PoW) for the Ethereum blockchain. However, here are five misconceptions that stand out among the rest. Misconception 1: Ethereum gas fees will reduce after The Merge Ethereum’s impending upgrade will reduce Ethereum’s infamous gas fees (transaction fees) is one of the biggest misconceptions circulating among investors. While reduced gas fees tops every investor’s wishlist, The Merge is a change of consensus mechanism that will transition the Ethereum blockchain from PoW to p...
Ethereum researcher, Vivek Raman, is convinced that Ethereum’s (ETH) upcoming transition to a proof-of-stake system will enable it to take over Bitcoin’s (BTC) position as the most prominent cryptocurrency. “Ethereum does have, just from an economic perspective and because of the effect of the supply shock, a chance to flip Bitcoin,” said Raman in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. [embedded content] The Merge, a long-awaited upgrade that will complete Ethereum’s transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake system, is set to take place in September. In addition, The Merge will transform Ethereum’s monetary policy, making the network more environmentally sustainable and reducing ETH’s total supply by 90%. “After The Merge, Ether...
Ethereum’s long-awaited migration to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which has been pushed back time and time again, looks set to occur sometime in August. Hopefully. Preston Van Loon, a core developer of the Ethereum (ETH) network, told attendees at the Permissionless conference that the transition, known as the Merge, would occur sometime in August if everything plays out according to plan. Ethereum core Dev @preston_vanloon just said the eth merge is ready,they are now only testing, and expects the merge to happen in August. Packed room @Permissionless are excited about it. Great question @TrustlessState. Also on panel @drakefjustin pic.twitter.com/vX4beNatJ5 — Benjamin Cohen (benjicohen.eth) (@benjicohen421) May 19, 2022 Van Loon told the 5000 attendees that the team ...