Ethereum Foundation Announces Holešky Testnet Shutdown

BlockBeats News, September 1st, the Ethereum Foundation officially announced that the Holešky testnet has reached the end of its planned lifecycle and will soon be deprecated. Following the completion of the Fusaka upgrade on Holešky two weeks ago, the vast majority of remaining validator nodes will be shut down. Subsequently, the client teams, testing teams, and infrastructure teams will no longer support Holešky.

The official statement mentioned that Holešky went live in 2023 as Ethereum's largest public testnet, specifically designed for large-scale staking infrastructure and validator operation testing. The network has fulfilled its mission by supporting thousands of validators through protocol upgrade testing, including the Dencun network upgrade and the recent Pectra upgrade.

However, following the activation of the Pectra testnet in early 2025, Holešky experienced a significant non-triviality leak, leading to a surge in validator exits from the queue. Although the network eventually recovered and completed confirmation, the prolonged validator exit process made it impractical to complete full validator lifecycle testing within a reasonable timeframe. This directly led to the creation and launch of the new Hoodi testnet in March 2025, providing a new testing environment free from these limitations.