Ethereum Launches Hoodi Testnet for Pectra Upgrade After Previous Delays

The Ethereum core development team has launched the third testnet, Hoodi, for the Pectra upgrade on March 17. This follows the problematic launches of the previous testnets, Holesky and Sepolia, in February. The Hoodi testnet aims to provide a stable, mainnet-like environment for stress-testing Ethereum's core infrastructure, allowing developers to better prepare for the Pectra upgrade, the biggest Ethereum update since 'The Merge.'

Announced by Tim Beiko, a seasoned developer in the Ethereum Foundation, Hoodi has a short-term focus on testing validator exits. The testnet will activate Pectra upgrades 10 days following its launch on March 26, having been accepted during the Ethereum All Core Dev Call on March 13. If the Hoodi testnet proves successful—and without major bugs that affected the first two testnets—the Pectra upgrade can be launched on the mainnet 30 days following the activation of Pectra on Hoodi or on April 25.

Ethereum developers are looking forward to testing Pectra on Hoodi and will use these test updates to ensure that bugs are fixed before the Pectra upgrade goes live. This aims to ensure that all major bugs are fixed so as not to disrupt the main Ethereum blockchain once Pectra is updated to the main blockchain. The Hoodi testnet aims to avoid the failures of its predecessors by looking to 'mimic' the Ethereum mainnet as closely as possible. The testnet will launch a validator set and stake distribution that is similar to the Ethereum mainnet, meaning at least 20 million test ETH staked distributed across 11 client teams and five staking operators.

Despite the challenges that the Pectra upgrade has faced, investors and developers remain convinced that the Pectra upgrade, once launched, will be a success for the network. Alex Loktev, CRO at P2P.org, explained the benefits of the new staking model on Pectra, stating it will enhance the adoption of ETH staking and drive institutional investors due to the practical nature of the model to real-world financial management. "What excites me most is how this could bring in a whole new segment of users who were previously sitting on the sidelines due to the all-or-nothing nature of staking. We're already seeing increased interest from institutional clients who value this flexibility," Loktev added.

The Pectra upgrade aims to solve long-standing challenges on the Ethereum blockchain, such as high transaction fees, complexity in staking for new users, and the maximum ETH lock-up for validators. The upgrade will make the blockchain faster, more scalable, and easier to use for blockchain users, developers, and validators. It will also include scaling proposals to double the blob count for data availability from three to six.

The Pectra upgrade was initially slated to launch on the mainnet in late 2024 or early 2025, but the efforts have been pushed back. This is mainly due to repeated delays due to client readiness issues and synchronization bugs in the first two Ethereum testnets, Holesky and Sepolia. On March 10, Holesky's testnet achieved finality, where all transactions on Holesky are now immutable and irreversible after a two-week delay due to a configuration bug in the client software, not the Pectra upgrade itself. The upgrade launched on Sepolia on March 5, but hours later, a bug was discovered (and solved) whereby Ethereum developers were receiving error messages on their geth nodes and noticed empty blocks being mined.