Ethereum Developers to Launch New Testnet Hoodi for Pectra Verification

On March 17, Ethereum developers will launch a new long-term test network, Hoodi, to complete the verification of the Pectra update.

ACDE Recap

A new testnet, Hoodi, is going live Monday to wrap up Pectra testing, if you need to test validator exits, be on the lookout for it! Everything else can be tested on Sepolia & Holesky.

Pectra will be scheduled 30+ days after Hoodi forks successfully, pending infra… pic.twitter.com/FK05GmtPnk

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 13, 2025

The decision made during the recent teleconference of the ACDE Call was driven by issues with activating the hard fork in the Holesky testnet. The network’s operation was restored only two weeks after the failure. However, it is still impossible to test the validator exit function in Pectra.

Developers concluded that having client teams write their own code to fix the bug in Holesky could delay the update verification work. They considered creating a new testnet to be the best solution.

The implementation of Pectra in Hoodi is scheduled for March 26. If the update is successfully activated in the testnet, the deployment of the hard fork in the main network will occur no earlier than 30 days later — after April 25.

For the next update — Fusaka — new deadlines have been set:

• March 24 is the final date for submitting proposals for included EIP;
• by March 31, client teams must decide on their preferred scope of the update.

The final scale of the upgrade will be established on April 10.

Previously, the Ethereum hard fork named Dencun took place in March 2024.