Ethereum developers are under pressure as the Pectra upgrade rolls out to a new testnet following several unexpected issues that have delayed its deployment to the mainnet.

The Pectra upgrade, which was expected to hit the Ethereum mainnet in March, was deployed into the network’s Holesky testnet on Feb. 24. However, the upgrade failed to finalize on the network, prompting developers to investigate and address the causes. 

On March 5, the update was rolled out to the Sepolia testnet. However, developers again encountered errors, which were made worse by an unknown attacker who used an “edge case” to cause the mining of empty blocks. 

To better prepare for the upgrade, Ethereum core developers created a new testnet called “Hoodi.”

Ethereum developers “exhausted” from Pectra preparations

Hoodi was launched on March 17, and the Pectra upgrade will roll out on Hoodi on March 26. If the upgrade runs smoothly, Pectra may hit the mainnet as early as April 25. 

In an interview with Cointelegraph’s Felix Ng, Ethereum Foundation’s protocol support team member Nixo Rokish said developers have been through a lot while preparing for the Pectra upgrade. Rokish told Cointelegraph: 

“I think that people are nervous because 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 added that exhaustion is setting in, especially for the consensus layer developers, as Hoodi marks the third attempt to test Pectra.

“I think the consensus layer devs especially, but also like somewhat the execution layer devs are exhausted right now,” Rokish told Cointelegraph. 

Related: Ethereum devs agree to stop forking around and accelerate the roadmap

Ethereum devs solved what needed to be solved

According to Rokish, the Holesky testnet failed in part because it had never been tested with such a small validator set on the canonical chain.

“As decentralized as Holesky is, it has never been tested at so few validators on the canonical chain,” she said. 

When about 10% was left on the canonical chain, the validators overloaded their RAM and memory as they kept the state for 90% of validators on the non-canonical chain. 

Rokish said they had never seen this before. “And so the consensus layer devs all of a sudden had this problem where they had to change a bunch of things, and I think that that was really tiring for them,” she said. 

Despite the recent testnet challenges, Ethereum’s broader development continues to show progress.

On March 13, 2024, the network rolled out the Dencun upgrade, which implemented many changes in the blockchain. 

High gas fees, which were once a huge problem for the network, have become a thing of the past. A year after its Dencun upgrade, Ethereum’s gas fees dropped by 95%. On March 23, average gas prices reached historic lows of 0.28 gwei.

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