Ethereum Testnet Holesky Resumes After Pectra Update Glitch

At epoch 119,090, the Holesky test network restored its final state following a slot finalization glitch during the Pectra hard fork activation.

On February 24, developers implemented the update in the testnet. However, the upgrade encountered a “configuration issue on three main network clients.”

The identified bug was specific to Holesky and did not affect the main blockchain or Pectra.

Parithosh Jayanthi from the Ethereum Foundation highlighted the role of developers Raphael Matias, Barnabas Busa, Sam Calder-Mason in restoring the testnet’s state, and particularly noted the “tools” from the specialist known as pk910.

Activation of Pectra on March 5 in another test network — Sepolia — also led to a failure. In this instance, the cause was incorrect event generation by the deposit contract.

After corrections were made, a malicious actor intervened. They executed the previous scenario by sending a zero transaction. Developers admitted they overlooked this edge case.

The team planned to deploy Pectra on the Ethereum mainnet in early April.