Ethereum devs launch Hoodi testnet to finalize Pectra testing

Ethereum developers plan to sunset the network’s largest testnet, Holesky, which will be replaced by a new trial environment called Hoodi.

In a March 19 blog post, the Ethereum Foundation announced that it will discontinue the Holesky testnet after the network was crippled by the much-anticipated Pectra upgrade last month.

Developers decided to deprecate Holesky following technical failures in February when Pectra was deployed for testing. The upgrade broke Holesky’s network, rendering its validator set unusable for weeks.

EF engineers implemented a fix in March, but Holesky remained clogged. A similar issue occurred on Sepolia, Ethereum’s (ETH) second-largest test environment, though developers were able to find a hotfix. Developers use these testnets to simulate and debug network upgrades like Pectra before deploying them on Ethereum’s mainnet.

The Holesky network has since then finalized, but the exited validators would take approximately one year to fully be removed from the validator set. 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.

EF blog post

Moving forward, a new testnet called Hoodi will replace Holesky, said EF DevOps engineer Paritosh Jayanthi and EF core coordinator Tim Beiko. Devs intend to test Pectra on Hoodi on March 26 as the final dress rehearsal before a mainnet debut. If the test goes as planned, the EF could ship Pectra to ETH’s main chain by April 25.