Ethereum Foundation releases announcement on the closure of Holešky test network

According to BlockBeats, on September 1, the Ethereum Foundation officially issued a statement saying that the Holešky test network has reached the end of its life cycle as planned and will stop service soon. Two weeks after the Fusaka upgrade is confirmed in Holešky, the vast majority of remaining verification nodes will be shut down. After that, the client team, test team and infrastructure team will no longer support Holešky. Officials said that Holešky was launched as Ethereum’s largest public test network in 2023 and was designed for large-scale staking infrastructure and validator operation tests. The network has achieved its mission to help thousands of validators complete protocol upgrade testing, including the Dencun network upgrade and most recently the Pectra upgrade. But after the activation of the Pectra testnet in early 2025, Holešky experienced a large-scale inactive leak, resulting in a surge in validator exit queues. Although the network is finally restored and confirmed, the lengthy validator exit process makes it impractical to complete the full validator lifecycle test within a reasonable time frame. This directly prompted the creation and launch of the new test network Hoodi in March 2025, which provides a new testing environment without these restrictions.