Ethereum’s Sepolia Testnet Faces Glitch Post-Pectra Activation

On March 5, the Sepolia test network ceased processing transactions for several hours following the implementation of the Pectra hard fork. Developers identified a bug and released a patch to resolve it.

Well, seems like I jinxed it ? We’re investigating an issue caused by the custom deposit contract on Sepolia. This has caused some EL clients to have issues including transactions in blocks. https://t.co/OOZpHqxO6S

— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) March 5, 2025

“We are working on an issue with the user deposit contract on Sepolia. This led to failures in including transactions in blocks,” — stated Ethereum Foundation’s EF protocol support lead Tim Beiko.

The issue stemmed from the peculiarities of the contract, which emitted two events (transfer + deposit) instead of one. As a result, some EL clients “choked” and stopped including transactions.

pectra fork on sepolia went live, then things got weird

— looked fine at first, then blocks started closing with 0 txs
— turns out sepolia’s deposit contract emits two events (transfer + deposit) instead of one
— some execution clients choked on it, txs stopped getting included… pic.twitter.com/eyCGAon8GI

— Rohit | Okto ?⛓️ | Orchestrating Web3 (@rrohit689) March 5, 2025

It took six hours to fix the bug.

The activation of Pectra in Sepolia followed similar actions in Holesky on February 24, which at one point led to slot finalization failures “due to a configuration issue on three major clients.” Specialists also had to release a software update.

Despite the discovered bugs, the team did not postpone the deployment of the update in Sepolia.

Pectra is formed from the names of two previously planned hard forks, Prague (for the execution layer) and Electra (for the consensus layer).

EIPs include improvements in account abstraction, introduce significant changes to validator operations, and aim to enhance overall network performance.

Previously, the security team launched a bounty program for stress-testing the hard fork until March 24, with a prize pool of $2 million.

Analysts at JPMorgan believe Ethereum faces “intense competition” from rival blockchain projects like Solana.

In February, developers noted the advisability of reducing the frequency of network upgrade activations from a year to six months.