The new test network that will mark the path and technological evolution of Ethereum, Holesky, has not been successfully deployed, and its launch has been delayed by two weeks.
The Ethereum development team has recently reported that the launch of the new testnet, Ethereum Holesky, has failed due to a problem in the new network's generation specifications. The failure delays the launch of the new testnet and keeps the Sepolia and Goerli testnet networks as the still functional options for performing test deployments within Ethereum.
The long-awaited new Ethereum testnet, the Ethereum Holesky network, has not been able to be successfully deployed by Ethereum developers. With this, the long-awaited technological milestone that was supposed to serve as a celebration of the first anniversary of the historic update “The Merge”, has been derailed. The reason for the failure? A problem in the configuration of the genesis of the new network, which led to a synchronization problem of its nodes and the breaking of its consensus/block generation layer. Because of this, Ethereum developers have decided to delay the launch of this network for two more weeks.
Parithosh Jayanthi (@parithosh_j), DevOps at the Ethereum Foundation, has informed of the event in your X account, making clear the problem they faced, with Ethereum Holesky:
We had a misconfiguration in the genesis file and that caused the Holesky network to start incorrectly. Some validators manually fixed the configuration and were able to start the chain, but not enough for the network to finish. https://t.co/5fchlRBCP3—parithosh | 🐼👉👈🐼 (@parithosh_j) September 15, 2023
While this does not affect the functioning of the Ethereum mainnet in any way, the event is a clear reminder to developers of the importance of testnet networks when it comes to applying new changes to nodes and all underlying technology in the crypto ecosystem.
And, with Ethereum being the second largest blockchain in the world, carrying out this type of action must be carried out with extreme care to avoid inconveniences that may affect the correct functioning of the mainnet.
Ethereum Holesky, a new testnet for Ethereum 2.0
The arrival of Ethereum Holesky was intended to finally make a definitive jump to Ethereum 2.0 on the Ethereum test networks. Currently, the test networks deployed for Ethereum are Goerli (based on PoW) and Sepolia (based on PoS). Both networks are currently functional, but there are some problems in accessing their tokens.
For example, obtaining ETH tokens from Goerli has become an odyssey for developers, who not only have to subscribe to the faucet websites, but also take actions on their social networks (such as a Tweet promoting a service or website) and even have real ETH tokens in their wallets.
Anything to get a few Goerli ETH tokens to test their decentralized applications under development. Holesky's arrival is set to change this, as well as offering other features and benefits to Ethereum developers, such as being able to install a Holesky node and generate their own tokens for this network, which means they would no longer be dependent on third-party faucets to obtain test tokens.
Features and benefits of Ethereum Holesky
Thus, Ethereum Holesky's proposal was to offer access to a series of features and benefits that make it an attractive option for developers. On the one hand, Holesky would allow developers an easy way to produce their own test tokens, but at the same time, it also offers mechanisms to test and take advantage of all the possibilities offered (and yet to be offered) by Ethereum 2.0.
Let's remember that while Ethereum 2.0 has been around for a year now, many of the network's promises are still unfulfilled. Scalability solutions like shardning or dankshardking are still in development. Features like zkEVM, a privacy-focused virtual machine, rollups, and other Ethereum 2.0 improvements still seem a long way off in the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap presented by Vitalik Buterin and his team. In all of these cases, Holesky is a fundamental part of the development of these technologies, because it would be on this network where the corresponding test deployments for them would be carried out.
In fact, the Ethereum development team has commented that the roadmap of test networks, it's very simple:
- Goerli, launched in 2019, is expected to be operational until the end of 2023.
- Sepolia, launched in 2021, is expected to remain operational until 2026.
- While Holesky would be launched in 2023 and would remain in operation until 2028.
Thus, the successful launch of Holesky is critical to securing the future of Ethereum development. And this is key, because Holesky is the testnet most similar to the current and future Ethereum that we will ever see. This means that projects developed on this testnet can be easily deployed on the mainnet once the necessary tests have been carried out, simplifying the development and deployment of decentralized applications on Ethereum.
Retrying in two weeks
In the face of the failure, the Ethereum development team has taken things calmly. For that reason, despite the fact that it is known that it failed, the team has decided to retry the deployment again in two weeks. This puts the launch of Holesky at the end of September 2023, which is still within the margins of the Ethereum testnet roadmap.
Whatever the case, the Ethereum development team wants to stop using legacy code like the one that powers Ethereum Goerli, and move once and for all to an ecosystem focused on Ethereum 2.0 and everything that this ecosystem has to offer its users and developers.
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