Ethereum developers were unable to launch the Holesky testnet and scheduled a new attempt in two weeks.
We had a misconfiguration in the el genesis file and that led to the holesky network improperly launching. Some validators manually fixed the config and were able to start the chain, but not enough for the network to finalize. https://t.co/5fchlRBCP3
— parithosh | ???? (@parithosh_j) September 15, 2023
The testnet launch 15 September was timed to the anniversary of The Merge — the major upgrade that migrated the blockchain to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm.
According to developer Paritosh Jayanthi, the failure was caused by an incorrect configuration in the genesis file. Some validators manually made changes and managed to start the chain, but this proved insufficient for finalizing the network, he said.
Sorry for the chaos! We’ll add some more validation steps and better docs to try and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
— parithosh | ???? (@parithosh_j) September 15, 2023
“Sorry for the chaos! We will conduct some additional checks and improve the documentation to ensure that this does not happen again,” wrote Jayanthi.
The new testnet is set to replace Goerli, which has been operating since 2019. Support for the latter will end in early 2024. Holesky is expected to run until 2028.
Holesky is intended to test staking solutions, evaluate infrastructure and protocols. For testing decentralized applications, smart contracts, and other Ethereum Virtual Machine–related functions, Sepolia will continue to be used.
Holesky will differ from existing testnets by a significantly larger number of validators, more than the mainnet’s count. The developers say this will allow testing solutions under more stringent conditions.
Another feature of Holesky will be 1.6 billion test ETH in circulation. Goerli has a cap of 120 million goETH, corresponding to the market supply of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The cap has periodically posed problems by raising the cost of testing applications.
“We could revive the network with a fix, but we decided that it would probably be cleaner to start from scratch, given that this will be a new testnet for many years,” commented Jayanthi to CoinDesk.
Holesky is intended to play a key role in the planned Ethereum hard fork called Dencun (Cancun-Deneb). According to the developer, the delay in launching the testnet will not affect the update timeline.
Earlier in June, the Ethereum team had preliminarily drafted the packages for the upcoming upgrade to the execution and consensus layers.