With the final testnet Goerli upgrade, the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade is now one step closer to live activation on the mainnet blockchain sometime in April.
The final dress rehearsal for Ethereum’s upcoming major upgrade “Shapella” has taken place on the Goerli testnet.
#Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade is one step closer.
The hard fork is now being tested on the Goerli public testnet.
That’s what it’s all about 👇 pic.twitter.com/m83sQ77qrd
— Binance (@binance) March 15, 2023
The upgrade was triggered at epoch 162304 on March 14 at 10:26 AM UTC. While the epoch wasn’t initially finalized due to low validator participation, it did later, as pointed out by Arbitrum developer “Terence.eth”.
“After 15 epochs, Goerli is done. Nothing wrong with the client software. We just need to get offline operators to upgrade. Good stress test. On to the next one. Mainnet,” Terence.eth tweeted.
Three testnets were used and Goerli was the last one to pass the scenario. The test is the most anticipated of the three, given that it has the most validators and is most similar to activity on the Ethereum blockchain.
Ethereum developer Tim Beiko celebrated the historic moment on Twitter. “Goerli forked,” he tweeted.
As previously reported, a mainnet launch date has yet to be set, although Beiko said it will “probably” be decided at a developer meeting on March 16, “assuming all goes well with Goerli.”
According to Beiko, the team recommends waiting four weeks for any potential mainnet fork after the Goerli upgrade, meaning a mainnet hard fork could happen in mid-April.