The Pectra testnet activation revealed issues successful clients with deposit declaration configurations changes connected Ethereum testnets. While Sepolia's recovery was straightforward and the web has since afloat recovered, Holesky experienced extended inactivity leaks arsenic portion of its betterment mechanism.
The Holesky web has since past finalized, but the exited validators would instrumentality astir 1 twelvemonth to afloat beryllium removed from the validator acceptable (¹). While stakers tin trial deposits, consolidations and each different Pectra features, the size of the exit queue prevents Holesky from being utilized to trial the afloat validator lifecycle wrong a tenable timeframe.
To code this, a caller testnet has been launched: Hoodi. It volition activate the Pectra web upgrade astatine epoch 2048 (Wed. March 26, 2025 07:37:12 UTC).
Moving forward, staking operators and infrastructure providers should usage Hoodi for validator testing. To let clip for the migration, the Holesky testnet volition beryllium supported until September 2025. Aside from validator exits, each different Pectra features tin beryllium tested connected Holesky.
Summary of testnets and their purpose
- Holesky: Validators and Staking providers (Expected extremity of beingness 30th September, 2025). Client developers volition besides usage Holesky to trial state bounds increases and different protocol accent tests.
- Sepolia: Application and tooling devs (Expected extremity of beingness 30th September, 2026)
- Hoodi: Validators and Staking providers (Expected extremity of beingness 30th September, 2028)
- Planned Sepolia replacement: Expected motorboat day of March 2026
¹: For a deeper dive into however the Beacon concatenation exit queue works, spot https://hackmd.io/@mikeneuder/eli5-ethereum-validator-exits