On the occasion of the first anniversary of The Merge, Ethereum developers have launched a new testnet called ‘Holesky.’ This testnet has the potential to become the most important within the Ethereum ecosystem in the years to come.
As a reminder, The Merge is one of the major events in the history of the Ethereum blockchain, as it transitioned from a Proof of Work to a Proof of Stake blockchain after several years of work.
Although this testnet is a direct celebration of the Ethereum merge, it will not lack interest as it will simply replace the Goerli testnet, which will be closed from the beginning of 2024.
The launch of the Holesky testnet addresses a growing need within the Ethereum community to be able to test the future developments of the network on a large scale.
According to Parithosh Jayanthi, lead developer of Ethereum, ‘the goal is to avoid scaling issues on the testnet, but that means that we need a much larger testnet.’
Concretely, this testnet is designed to be twice as large as the main Ethereum network, offering developers massive scalability.
Parithosh Jayanthi states that Holesky is expected to become the largest test network for Ethereum, with 1.4 million validators compared to the main Ethereum network’s 700,000 validators.
Therefore, compared to other smaller testnets, Holesky is expected to provide a more stringent and rigorous infrastructure and updates that will mitigate the risks of unforeseen issues when launching updates on the mainnet.
Despite some complications at launch, the first blocks of the new testnet appeared this Friday and can be seen on beaconcha.in, a blockchain explorer specifically designed to track the progress of the Ethereum network.
