As the proposed date for the Shanghai Ethereum update approaches, developers have created a testing environment called a “shadow fork,” according to a January 23 tweet thread by Go-Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden. A new testnet appears to have been created to test the conditions required for Ether (ETH) staking withdrawals, which is currently disabled but intended to be active in the update.
Withdrawal-Mainnet-Shadow-Fork-1 is complete
It started with some problems because the config was not correctly applied in geth (we do not allow overriding the mainnet config). The configuration is applied correctly and all nodes agree. We will start some bad nodes,.
— MariusVanDerWijden (@vdWijden) January 23, 2023
The name of the testnet is “Withdrawal-Mainnet-Shadow-Fork-1.” According to Web3 node provider Alchemy, a “shadow fork” is a fork of the mainnet intended for testing purposes only.
Van Der Wijden stated that he and another developer named “Potuz” will create a malicious node that will send blocks and malicious messages to other nodes in the testnet and try to convince them to join a fake version of the network. Currently, the network is running smoothly, but Van Der Wijden says he wants to “see if Potuz and I can pull it off.” This is apparently done to see if the upgrade can prevent malicious attacks or if more changes need to be made before it is implemented on the mainnet.
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The launch of this testnet comes after the devs have expressed increasing urgency to make Ether staking withdrawals a reality. On January 6, they held a meeting where they agreed to drop the proposed EVM Object Format (EOF) from the Shanghai upgrade. EOF is intended to make Ethereum easier to upgrade in the future. But due to the complexity, the devs decided to leave Shanghai out of fear that it would delay the implementation backwards.
Over 14.5 million ETH (more than $23 billion worth at the time of this writing) has been deposited into Ethereum staking contracts and cannot be withdrawn now, according to a December report by Nansen. In November, Ethereum devs were heavily criticized for allegedly moving the gate on enabling withdrawals.
The Shanghai update is currently scheduled to take place in March.