Ethereum’s Holesky testnet finally reached finality on Monday, nearly two weeks after the Pectra upgrade went live.
Epoch 119,090 sealed the deal at around 19:00 UTC, with over two-thirds of validators affirming the network’s status. An epoch refers to the period during which a specific number of blocks are completed in the blockchain.
Key Points:
- The Holesky testnet’s finality was restored after resolving a client-software configuration bug that had delayed finality since Feb. 24.
- The Sepolia testnet, also using the Pectra upgrade, reached finality but initially faced issues with empty blocks due to a flawed deposit contract, which were corrected.
Finality is crucial, as it locks transactions irreversibly within two epochs, or roughly 13 minutes. This essential capability had been absent since the Pectra upgrade due to a configuration glitch in the client software, not the upgrade itself.
Efforts over the past weeks have enabled this recovery, with developers working on stabilizing nodes and reverting older states to completely revive the testnet for further Pectra testing.
The Pectra upgrade features significant improvements, including gas payments in non-ETH tokens, account abstraction, and heightened staking limits.
