Ethereum fails to break $1,800 and completes latest 'shadow fork' as Bitcoin advances
The cryptocurrency market maintains part of its advances of last week on Monday, although Ethereum, the undisputed protagonist of the coming days due to the expected 'Merge' of its homonymous blockchain, gives up almost all the recent gains. The second token by market capitalization, which is expected to complete in the coming days the expected change from consensus to 'proof of participation', has not been able to conquer $1,800 despite reaching highs since mid-August.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, manages to stretch the rally started on Friday, when it managed to surpass the important price level of $20,000. It left new highs of more than two weeks at $22,000 and seems eager to return to the price levels of the first half of August, when it touched $25,000.
The rest of the 'altcoins' also leave advances and the total market capitalization settles above the trillion dollar mark, in the run-up to a few days in which the entire industry will remain on tenterhooks. "One thing that is pretty clear when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry is that there is no such thing as smooth; the upgrade is going to be the start of a new bumpy ride and is likely to bring more wild swings for traders and investors," warned Naeem Aslam, analyst at Avatrade.
Many major industry players are maximizing security measures during the event, as they don't want to repeat what happened in 2016 when hackers stole more than 40,000 Ethereum classic coins from the Yunbi exchange. This time, however, companies such as FTX and Coinbase already informed their users that they will not allow any deposits or withdrawals during the event. The idea and practice is also expected to be followed by decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap.
All in all, the news surrounding the update to the Ether blockchain - as Ethereum is also called - could not be more encouraging. As reported by the developers, the latest 'shadow fork' - as the prerequisites needed to transition from the current 'proof-of-work' transaction validation model are called - has been successfully deployed.
Such tests, 'shadow forks', help developers test synchronization assumptions to ensure network security during permanent upgrades. In light of 'The Merge,' Ethereum developers deployed the first 'shadow fork' on April 11, 2022.
Nearly six months later, Ethereum research and engineering firm Nethermind confirmed that the transition to Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 - the latest such test - was successful, indicating that the network is ready to transition to a participation-proof consensus mechanism.
The testnet allowed Ethereum developers to practice running nodes, deploying contracts, and testing infrastructure, among other things. As a result, 'shadow forks' allow developers to assess the impact of network updates before they happen. As part of the upgrade, the community needs to update their Ethereum clients and run the combination of an execution layer and a consensus layer.