Ethereum's new testnet 'Holesky' will be launched in September
Date: 2023-08-19 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: BLOCKCHAIN, IN WORLD
At a meeting on August 17, Ethereum developers discussed the development of a new testnet called "Holesky", which is due to go live on September 15.
Parithosh Jayanti, DevOps at the Ethereum Foundation, said the developers had tested 1.4 million validators on the Holesky testnet and were able to complete the network. Jayanti said that this is now the recommended starting size for the testnet.
Jayanti also asked the developers how many testnet tokens should circulate on Holesky. Ethereum developers decided to put 1.6 billion Holesky ETH into circulation, as large reserves were previously maintained on test networks. The developers decided not to decrease this number in order to match the Ethereum mainnet offer of 120 million ETH, although this option was briefly considered.
Holesky will launch in mid-September
The GitHub documentation indicates that Holesky will launch on September 15, 2023 at 14:00 UTC. Incidentally, that was the launch date for the Ethereum merger in 2022.
The testnet will be in use for several years, with Long Term Service (LTS) support lasting until 2027 and End of Life (EOL) until 2028.
The documentation also states that Holesky will replace the Goerli Ethereum testnet, which was introduced in 2019 as the project was preparing to launch its Proof-of-Stake features and phase out Proof-of-Work mining. Goerli and Holesky, as well as the current Ethereum mainnet, act as proof-of-stake chains. However, unlike the Ethereum mainnet, the two testnets do not use ETH tokens with a real market value.
Holesky will also pave the way for two future Ethereum updates: a runtime update called Cancun and a consensus layer update called Deneb.
The unusual name of the test network is not "sky hole", but is named after the railway station in the Czech city of Prague. This station is often casually referred to as "Goleshki". Acckee Blockchain Security has discovered that the testnet code contains an easter egg: the testnet chain ID, 17000, is also the area's zip code.
