Ethereum Developers Try for Second Time to Launch New Holesky Test Network

Ethereum developers on Thursday initiated their second attempt to launch the Holesky test network, after an attempt earlier this month failed.

As of 8:23 am ET, the launch appeared to be going smoothly.

On a livestream on YouTube from the EthStaker, one of the developers said, around 8:10 am ET, “It looks like the launch is successful.”

“Not going to have to build a third one!” responded another developer on the call.

The new Holesky network is supposed to help developers test some ambitious scaling plans for the main Ethereum blockchain, replacing the Goerli testnet that is currently in wide use. The new testnet will allow twice as many validators to join the network compared to mainnet, and was designed to address Goerli’s testnet ETH supply issues.

The original planned launch date of Holesky, on Sept. 15, was supposed to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Ethereum’s historic “Merge” transition to a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake blockchain. But that didn’t happen due to some misconfiguration issues, according to developers.

Developers decided to postpone the launch with a fresh start, “considering it’ll be a new network that’ll live for years,” Parithosh Jayanthi, a devops engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, told CoinDesk in an interview after the botched earlier attempt.

Holesky will be important for Ethereum’s upcoming hard fork, Dencun, where proto-danksharding, a technical feature which will reduce gas fees, is supposed to go live.