With the successful upgrade of the Hoodi Testnet, Ethereum is one step closer to deploying Pectra on the Mainnet.

Source: The Block

Ethereum developers successfully deployed the Pectra upgrade on the Hoodi testnet on Wednesday.

There were issues during the testing on Holesky and Sepolia, with configuration errors leading to network instability.

Ethereum developers have activated the Pectra upgrade on the Hoodi testnet, which is part of a systematic approach taken by Ethereum to achieve stable mainnet deployment.

This move could be the last test before the planned deployment to the Ethereum mainnet in the second quarter of this year.

Hoodi is a new test network launched by Ethereum developers on March 17, specifically for the final testing of the Pectra upgrade after encountering issues on the previous Holesky and Sepolia test networks.

Developers pointed out that Hoodi successfully forked Pectra and completed it about half an hour after activation, bringing Ethereum one step closer to implementing the upgrade on the mainnet.

The creation of Hoodi was due to obstacles encountered during testing on Holesky and Sepolia. Configuration errors led to network instability, causing the finality of Holesky to be lost for several weeks, while Sepolia faced synchronization issues.

Unlike Holesky, which has made comprehensive lifecycle testing impractical due to queue congestion, Hoodi provides a brand new starting point to ensure everything operates as expected. Hoodi will also permanently replace Holesky, which is expected to be deprecated later this year.

Through Hoodi, staking operators and client teams will test various code changes introduced by Pectra, such as improving the user experience of cryptocurrency wallets and implementing account abstraction through EIP-7702, raising the validator staking limit from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH with EIP-7251, and increasing the maximum blob count to enhance Rollup scalability through EIP-7691.

A developer previously stated in a meeting that if there are no major issues, Pectra could activate the mainnet about 30 days after the Hoodi test, expected by the end of April. However, the mainnet deployment could also be delayed until May or June to give stakeholders more time.