ETH testnet Holesky regains functionality after major outage
The Ethereum testnet Holesky has finally regained its functionality after nearly two weeks of disruption, marking a key milestone in testing the Pectra update. Since February 24, Holesky has been affected by a configuration bug that impacted network clients, preventing the final validation of transactions. Although not directly related to Pectra, this issue has slowed down the necessary research and adjustments before its deployment on the mainnet.
On Monday evening, Holesky regained finality at Epoch 119090, with over two-thirds of validators in action. This finality ensures that transactions are irreversibly validated, a process usually completed in two epochs (or about 13 minutes).
Stabilization efforts underway
Regaining finality is a crucial step towards fully restoring the testnet, but developers remain focused on stabilizing the nodes and cleaning up the old states. The goal is to enable teams to continue testing Pectra without further interruptions, ensuring a smooth transition before deployment on the main network.
In addition to Holesky, Pectra has also been deployed on Sepolia, Ethereum’s other major testnet. However, after a successful initial activation, Sepolia encountered a separate issue, resulting in the creation of empty blocks.
An attack on Sepolia highlights a vulnerability
The source of this anomaly on Sepolia has been identified as an attack exploiting a specific vulnerability in the custom deposit contract. A malicious actor sent transactions with zero tokens to the contract, triggering persistent dysfunction. This situation required coordinated intervention from client teams to fix the exploit and restore the proper functioning of the testnet.
Pectra: a major update in progress
Despite these complications, the Pectra upgrade remains a significant advancement for Ethereum, with several notable improvements to come. These include the ability to make gas payments in tokens other than ETH, account abstraction, and increased staking limits.
As the Ethereum mainnet prepares to integrate these innovations, these incidents on the testnets serve as a reminder of the importance of rigorous testing phases before any production release.
