The Ethereum Foundation announces that the Holešky Testnet will soon be shut down and the new Testnet Hoodi has been launched.

On September 1st, the Ethereum Foundation officially announced that the Holešky Testnet has reached the end of its lifecycle as planned and will soon cease operations. Two weeks after the Fusaka upgrade is confirmed on Holešky, the vast majority of the remaining validation Nodes will be shut down. After that, the client team, testing team, and infrastructure team will no longer provide support for Holešky.

The official statement indicates that Holešky was launched in 2023 as the largest public Testnet for Ethereum, specifically designed for large-scale staking infrastructure and validator operation testing. The network has achieved its mission, helping thousands of validators complete protocol upgrade tests, including the Dencun network upgrade and the recent Pectra upgrade.

However, after the activation of the Pectra Testnet in early 2025, a large-scale inactive leak phenomenon occurred in Holešky, leading to a surge in validator exits from the queue. Although the network eventually recovered and completed confirmations, the lengthy validator exit process made it impractical to complete a full validator lifecycle test within a reasonable timeframe. This directly prompted the creation and launch of the brand new Testnet Hoodi in March 2025, which provides a new testing environment free from these limitations.