# Epoch Transition In Harmony mainnet, there are 4 shards each producing new blocks separately and in parallel. The block heights between shards are not synchronized so you will see different shards have different block heights. An epoch is a period of time when the beacon shard (i.e. shard 0, the coordinator for other shards) produces a fixed number of blocks. In Harmony mainnet, an epoch is **32768** blocks (\~18.2h with a 2s block time) in the beacon shard. Once an epoch is completed in the beacon shard, that change is also passed onto the other shards, thus all shards are synchronized by epoch. At the end of each epoch, the committee election process will take place to elect the committees for the next epoch. The election process takes into account all the staking transactions confirmed before the election happens. The election result will take effect immediately, so we encourage all candidate validators to spin up their nodes even before the election happens. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.harmony.one/home/network/validators/definitions/epoch-transition.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.