Ropsten announces deprecation of Rinkeby & Kiln support

• alarm: that much Gray Glacier Upgrade Scheduled to be blocked 15,050,000Scheduled for June 29, 2022
• that much Kiln merge testnetwhich launched earlier this year, is scheduled to close shortly after the Ethereum mainnet switches to proof-of-stake.
• Ropsten, Ethereum’s longest-running proof-of-work testnet, has transitioned to proof-of-stake. It is scheduled to end in the fourth quarter of 2022.
• Rinkeby is a Geth-based proof-of-authority testnet. won’t It will transition to proof-of-stake and is scheduled to end in the second or third quarter of 2023.
• We recommend that users and developers migrate to Goerli or Sepolia as soon as possible to test Ethereum in context after the merge. After The Merge, Rinkebi won’t It must be a test environment suitable for the Ethereum mainnet. Unplanned mainnet upgrades may not apply to deprecated testnets.

Ethereum has many testnets that users and developers can test before interacting with the mainnet. It is effectively a copy of the Ethereum mainnet with no value whatsoever in Ether and other tokens. This allows developers of applications, tools, infrastructure, and protocols to deploy changes to their products (or the protocols themselves!) in a low-risk environment before moving to mainnet.

This means that because the testnet is a fully functional blockchain, its history and state grow over time. This ultimately makes nodes more difficult to run and maintain. For this reason, some testnets are shut down periodically. This happened last year. Pyrmont Beacon Chain Testnet And recently Kovan execution layer testnet.

As The Merge approaches, client developers have decided not to use more testnets in order to focus their efforts on keeping both testnets relevant in the long term. Görli and Sepolia.

Kiln, Rinkeby and Ropsten testnets are now deprecated.

Testnet termination schedule

These three testnets are now considered deprecated, but users and developers still have time to plan their migration before they are completely shut down. Kiln, Ropsten and Rinkeby are closed as per the schedule below.

Kiln: After mainnet merge

The Kiln testnet, launched in 2022 to provide a post-merge testing environment, is scheduled to shut down shortly after the Ethereum mainnet switches to proof-of-stake, expected in the second half of 2022.

developer shouldn’t Use Kiln as a long-lasting testing environment. It is expected to be the first testnet to be shut down after The Merge occurs on the Ethereum mainnet.

Robsten: Q4 2022

It was run on the Ropsten testnet. Merger June 8, 2022It is scheduled to end in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Developers currently using Ropsten as their staging/testing environment should migrate to Goerli or Sepolia.

Rinkebi: 2nd/3rd quarter 2023

Rinkeby testnet is ~ no Run it through The Merge. It is being replaced by Sepolia, and is scheduled to shut down around the second/third quarter of 2023, about a year after Sepolia switched to proof-of-stake.

Once the Ethereum mainnet switches to Proof-of-Stake, Rinkeby will no longer be the correct staging environment for the mainnet. A list of changes introduced by The Merge that application developers should be aware of is provided. here. Again, these changes are ~ no Placed in Rinkeby.

Developers currently using Rinkeby as a staging/testing environment should prioritize migrating to Goerli or Sepolia, while projects affected by Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake transition should aim to migrate as quickly as possible.

Görli & Sepolia

The two testnets that client developers will maintain after the merge are Goerli and Seplia.

The Goerli network will be merged with the Prater Beacon Chain testnet. A new beacon chain has been created to convert Sepolia to proof-of-stake.

Goerli’s beacon chain remains open for users who want to run testnet validators. Sepolia will operate with a set of permissioned validators, similar to how some testnets work today. Therefore, stakers who want to test protocol upgrades before they are deployed on mainnet should use Goerli.

Goerli also has a strong community and a lot of existing infrastructure to support it. Because that state is closest to the mainnet, it can be useful for testing smart contract interactions.

Sepolia, on the other hand, is fairly new. That said, both its status and history are quite small. This means that the network syncs quickly and running nodes on the network requires less storage space. This is useful for users who want to quickly spin up a node and interact directly with the network.

summary

This means Kiln, Ropsten and Rinkeby are now no longer in use. Kiln and Ropsten have already switched to proof-of-stake, but Rinkeby ~ no Try running this upgrade.

Kiln will be shut down after The Merge occurs on the mainnet. Then, by the end of the year, Ropsten will too. Rinkeby is expected to shut down around the second or third quarter of 2023, about a year after Sepolia switched to proof-of-stake.

Two testnets, Goerli and Seplia, will be maintained in the future. Goerli is recommended for stakers testing protocol upgrades and developers looking to interact with existing state at scale. Sepolia is recommended for users and developers who want to sync and interact with lighter chains.

Thank you to everyone who helps run, maintain, and support these networks!

Header photo courtesy of: carl hedin.