Ethereum developers delay Pectra mainnet launch with new testnet Hoodi

• Ethereum developers will launch a new testnet, Hoodi, to test the Pectra upgrade further before the mainnet launch.
• Hoodi will focus majorly on testing validator exits.
• Hoodi's launch follows setbacks encountered during the launch of Pectra on Holesky and Sepolia testnets.

Ethereum developers announced on Thursday that they will launch a new testnet, "Hoodi," to enable validators and infrastructure providers to adequately test the upcoming Pectra upgrade before mainnet deployment, according to Tim Beiko, who runs Ethereum's core protocol meetings.

Ethereum to launch Pectra upgrade on new testnet

In the latest All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call on Thursday, developers decided to launch Hoodi to specifically test validator exits — the process of removing a validator from performing block attestation and consensus duties.

Hoodi's launch follows configuration issues with execution layer clients on Holesky and Sepolia that hampered adequate testing of Pectra on both testnets.

Testnets or test networks are like playgrounds to launch and test the performance of important Ethereum technical upgrades before deploying them fully on the mainnet.

Hoodi will maintain a similar configuration and validator counts as the Ethereum mainnet. Developers aim to launch the Hoodi testnet on Monday and deploy its Pectra upgrade activation on March 26.

Pectra will go live on mainnet at least 30 days after the potential successful Hoodi upgrade — sometime in April or early May.

"Once Pectra successfully activates on Hoodi, a mainnet fork time for Pectra will be chosen. This will be at least 30 days after the Hoodi fork, but potentially farther out if infrastructure providers need more time to test on Hoodi," developers noted in a Thursday's post on Ethereum Magician.

Pectra will bring several features to Ethereum, including transaction batching, sponsored transactions, payment of gas fees in other ERC-20 tokens and wallet recovery — a group of features collectively referred to as 'account abstraction.' Other key features include increasing the maximum staking balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH to enable validators to consolidate their holdings and the expansion of blob spaces within Ethereum blocks.