Ethereum developers to launch new 'Hoodi' testnet ahead of much-anticipated Pectra upgrade

Ethereum Foundation developers will launch a new testnet called Hoodi, according to an All Devs Call on Thursday. The new "long-lived" testnet is expected to launch next week, on March 17. 

The move came about a week after Ethereum researchers and developers convened to discuss the fallout from the problematic Holesky and Sepoli hard forks, which both encountered issues. Last week, the researchers discussed whether to "shadow fork" the Holesky testnet to continue probing the much-anticipated Pectra upgrade. 

Holesky, one of Ethereum's two main testnet networks, lost finality due to a configuration bug approximately two weeks ago during a Pectra upgrade activation. Although the network regained finality on Monday , it is not entirely usable for all research purposes. 

The Pectra upgrade aims to improve Ethereum's useability and scalability. It includes plans to drive down the cost of data availability by increasing the number of "blob" transactions for Layer 2s, vastly increasing staking limits and introducing account abstraction, which greatly expands the functionality of smart contracts and wallets.

Pectra could be activated on the Ethereum mainnet as early as April 25, approximately 30 days after the upgrade is planned to be deployed on the new Hoodi testnet. The Ethereum Foundation plans to invest significant resources into this network and run a "similar validator count" as the Ethereum mainnet. 

According to the call on Thursday, the developers agreed to launch a new testnet rather than pursue other proposals. Hoodi is set to specifically give researchers a dedicated network to test validator exits, which would not be possible on Holesky due to a backed-up exit queue. Holesky and Sepolia will operate to test other research concerns.

"This option was chosen to avoid client teams writing custom code to clear the Holesky exit queue, which could lead to further bugs and delay work on Pectra fixes and Fusaka implementations," according to the call meeting notes.