Ethereum successfully completes the final shadow fork ahead of the Merge on September 9
- Earlier this week, the Bellatrix (update to the Ethereum Virtual Machine) upgrade also went live.
- ETH is currently trading at $1,712, with chances of reaching $2,000 in the next five days.
- Ethereum is making a gradual recovery rising by almost 20% in the last two weeks.
The Merge, aka Ethereum's transition from a Proof of Work (PoW) chain to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus chain, is currently the hot topic in the crypto space. With every passing day, the Merge gets closer, and another box is checked from the developers' list.
One such box was the final shadow fork.
Ethereum inches closer to a new beginning
One of the Ethereum researchers indicated that the network just went through the last shadow fork before the Merge, successfully executing Ethereum Mainnet Shadow Fork #13.
Shadow forks are basically conducted to expose all the possible issues that could come up when executing the mainnet Merge. When the mainnet is ready for Merge, a successful shadow fork will not expose any issues.
Transition in Mainnet-Shadowfork-13 (the last shadowfork before The Merge) was successful for all Nethermind nodes!#TheMerge #Ethereum #Nethermind #MSF13 pic.twitter.com/sddPPwSR1u
— Nethermind (@nethermindeth) September 9, 2022
Ethereum Merge is now just days away from going live, as earlier this week, the network also underwent the Bellatrix upgrade. However, unlike the shadow fork, the Bellatrix upgrade did note some hiccups as its "missed block rate" spiked by almost 1,700%.
Bellatrix, put simply, is the update to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which is responsible for all the decentralized applications on the network.
The anticipation for the Merge is such that not only individuals from the crypto space are hyped, but non-crypto-niche people are also gaining interest. So much so that Google even added a countdown for the Merge.
Ethereum Merge's countdown
But how has it impacted the price?
After the August crash threw ETH down to $1,424, the altcoin king began recovering, and over the last two weeks, the price has risen by almost 20% to trade at $1,712 at the time of writing.
ETH is currently treading the long-standing resistance block, and if the altcoin can manage to flip this range into support, it will be closer to the 38.2% Fibonacci level, which is the first sign of a rally for an asset.
Given that the Merge is just five days away, if ETH can hit $2,000 by then, the event's positive impact will place ETH in a rally.
Author
Aaryamann Shrivastava
FXStreet
Aaryamann Shrivastava is a Cryptocurrency journalist and market analyst with over 1,000 articles under his name. Graduated with an Honours in Journalism, he has been part of the crypto industry for more than a year now.
