Core developers of Ethereum have opted to establish a third testnet named Hoodi to better prepare for the upcoming Pectra upgrade, which has now been postponed until at least late April due to multiple bugs encountered during the initial two testnets.
The Hoodi testnet is set to be launched on March 17, with the Pectra upgrade to be activated shortly after on March 26, as announced by Ethereum Foundation developer Tim Beiko during a developer call on March 13.
If the Pectra upgrade operates successfully on Hoodi without significant issues, developers could potentially schedule a mainnet launch date for Pectra as early as 30 days post Hoodi’s activation, Beiko indicated.
This could mean that Pectra might go live on Ethereum’s mainnet as soon as April 25.
Beiko’s recent update regarding the Pectra upgrade: Ethereum Magicians
Pectra merges features from the Prague and Electra proposals and will implement over 10 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), mainly focusing on enhancing wallet functionality and user experience.
Additionally, it will incorporate scaling proposals aimed at increasing the blob count for data availability from three to six.
Initially planned for a late 2024 launch on Ethereum’s mainnet, Pectra has encountered several delays due to issues with client readiness and synchronization bugs found in the first two Ethereum testnets, Holesky and Sepolia.
Pectra was initially launched on Sepolia on March 5, but shortly thereafter, Ethereum developers began encountering error messages on their geth nodes, along with empty blocks being mined.
Christine Kim, vice president of research at Galaxy Digital, mentioned that Hoodi aims to closely replicate Ethereum’s mainnet by launching a validator set that mirrors the current mainnet operations.
This setup is expected to involve at least 20 million test staked-Ether (ETH) distributed among 11 client teams and five staking operators.
Source: Christine Kim
Beiko pointed out that some components of Pectra might still undergo testing on Sepolia and Holesky.
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The introduction of this third testnet aligns with Ethereum core developers’ agreement to implement future Ethereum protocol upgrades more rapidly, as discussed in an “All Core Devs” meeting on February 13.
A crypto-focused venture capital firm has also urged Ethereum core developers to expedite protocol updates to achieve more significant milestones on the technical roadmap and retain its competitive advantage as a prominent layer 1 blockchain.
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