Blockchain Developers
Ethereum
Ethereum (ETH) recently announced plans to discontinue support for the Holesky testnet in September. The decision comes after technical challenges faced during testing of the Pectra upgrade, leading to the creation of a new testnet, Hoodi, to ensure testing continues and prepare for the mainnet upgrade.
“The activation of the Pectra testnet revealed issues with clients changing deposit contract configurations on Ethereum testnets. While Sepolia’s recovery was straightforward and the network recovered fully, Holesky suffered extensive downtime leaks as part of its recovery mechanism,” the team highlighted in an official statement.
Launched almost two years ago, Holesky faced some difficulties during testing of the Pectra upgrade, with issues with the validator output queue. This action resulted in the network being limited in its usefulness to specific community-driven testing scenarios.
“The Holesky network has since been finalized, but it would take approximately one year for the exiting validators to be fully removed from the validator pool. While stakers can test deposits, consolidations, and all other Pectra features, the size of the exit queue prevents Holesky from being used to test the full validator lifecycle within a reasonable timeframe. To address this, a new testnet has been launched: Hoodi. It will activate the Pectra network upgrade at epoch 2048 (Wed. Mar 26, 2025 07:37:12 UTC),” complemented.
Already launched, the new Hoodi testnet will activate the Pectra upgrade in a week, specifically March 26, allowing staking operators and infrastructure providers to efficiently conduct validator testing.
“Moving forward, staking operators and infrastructure providers should use Hoodi for validator testing. To allow time for migration, the Holesky testnet will be supported until September 2025. In addition to validator outputs, all other Pectra features can be tested on Holesky.”
At the time of publication, the price of Ethereum was quoted at US$2,012.55, up 7% in the last 24 hours.
Ethereum Delays Pectra Upgrade, Launches New Hoodi Network to Ensure Stability
In a strategic move to ensure the stability and success of the upcoming Pectra upgrade, Ethereum developers decided to postpone the mainnet launch until April or May. The decision was made after bugs were identified in the Holesky and Sepolia testnets, and the team opted to launch a third testnet, called “Hoodi,” to monitor and fix the flaws.
“We discussed potential paths post-Holesky 10 and agreed on ‘Plan A’: launching a new testnet. This will allow us to test whether the validator exists, which is impossible on Holesky at the moment since the exit queue will take about 1 year to empty. All other Pectra functionality, including validator consolidations, can still be tested on Holesky and Sepolia,” revealed Tim Beiko, one of the developers.
The Hoodi testnet is primarily intended to verify the functionality of validators, an aspect that could not be adequately tested on previous networks due to issues with the exit queue. Additionally, Hoodi will allow developers to monitor other aspects of the Pectra upgrade, such as validator consolidations, ensuring that all components are working properly before the mainnet launch.