Nixo Rokish of the Ethereum Foundation told Cointelegraph that engineers were left feeling pressured and worn out by unforeseen problems on two testnets.
As the Pectra upgrade shifts to a new testnet after a string of unforeseen problems that have postponed its mainnet rollout, Ethereum developers are under pressure.
On February 24, the Pectra update was introduced onto the Holesky testnet of Ethereum, which was anticipated to be the mainnet in March. Nevertheless, the network update did not complete, which prompted engineers to look into and fix the reasons.
The upgrade was sent to the Sepolia testnet on March 5. But once again, engineers ran into problems, which were exacerbated by an unidentified attacker who mined empty blocks using a “edge case.”
Ethereum core engineers developed a new testnet named “Hoodi” in order to better prepare for the update.
Hoodi was introduced on March 17 and will get the Pectra update on March 26. Pectra may be live on the mainnet as early as April 25 if the upgrade goes without a hitch.
Nixo Rokish, a member of the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol support team, told Felix Ng of Cointelegraph that developers have had a difficult time getting ready for the Pectra update. “We just had two testnets in a row basically have really unexpected issues that were not fundamentally related to how it would have gone on mainnet,” Rokish told Cointelegraph, explaining why he believes people are anxious.
Since Hoodi is the third effort to test Pectra, Rokish continued, fatigue is starting to set in, particularly for the consensus layer engineers.
Rokish told Cointelegraph, “I think the consensus layer devs in particular, but also like somewhat the execution layer devs are exhausted right now.”
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The Holesky testnet had never been tested with such a tiny validator set on the canonical chain, which Rokish said contributed to its failure.
“Holesky has never been tested at so few validators on the canonical chain, despite its decentralized nature,” she said.
As they maintained the state for 90% of validators on the non-canonical chain, the validators overloaded their RAM and memory when around 10% remained on the canonical chain.
They had never seen this before, according to Rokish. According to her, “the consensus layer developers suddenly encountered this issue where they had to make a number of changes, and I believe that that was really exhausting for them.”
Ethereum’s overall development is still progressing in spite of the current testnet issues.
The network released the Dencun update on March 13, 2024, which brought about a number of blockchain modifications.
Once a major issue for the network, high petrol prices are now a thing of the past. Ethereum’s gas expenses decreased by 95% a year after its Dencun upgrade. Average gas prices hit all-time lows of 0.28 gwei on March 23.
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