The Shanghai upgrade has successfully been shadow forked by developers for the purposes of testing it on an iteration of the main Ethereum network. The upgrade test occurred at approximately 5:30 AM Eastern Time. Essentially, a shadow fork refers to a test version of the mainnet that allows developers to determine whether a piece of code from the proposed upgrade would even work properly on the actual blockchain. According to Marius Van Der Wijden, a Geth developer, there were a few minor technical issues with the nodes on Ethereum which utilize Geth clients after the fork. Developers have since been able to resolve the issues, and all nodes are now in agreement. Van Der Wijden added that they will conduct additional testing to guarantee that everything works properly. Moreover, through Shanghai, withdrawals will reportedly be enabled on the mainnet in March, allowing users to access their staked coins which were rendered temporarily inaccessible during the the Merge transition last year. Also, whereas withdrawals shall be the main feature, developers have completed various other improvements directed at optimizing gas costs for specific activities.
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