The entire community is still waiting for Ethereum’s significant upgrade, ‘The Merge.’ This revolutionary update would aid in the network’s transition from Proof-of-Work [PoW] to Proof-of-Stake [PoS]. Before that, the devs have been prepping with an array of testnets before the big upgrade. However, these testnets would reportedly bid farewell to the network following the integration of ‘The Merge.’
In a recent blog post, the Ethereum network will shut down testnets like Ropsten, Kiln, and Rinkeby. These testnets have acted as mirrors of the original upgrade and aided experiments. However, the testnets mentioned earlier have served their purpose and are being deprecated.
Elaborating the reason behind this decision, the Ethereum Foundation said,
“[..] because testnets are full-featured blockchains, their history and state grow over time. This eventually makes them harder to run nodes on and to maintain. For this reason, some testnets are periodically sunsetted.”
Ropsten, the longest-living PoW testnet will be shut down in Q4 2022. Kiln Merge testnet was rolled out at the beginning of the year and would be the first to be shut down. The testnet would discontinue right after Ethereum transitions into PoS.
In addition, Rinkeby would not move on to PoS like Ropsten and Kiln. It may be expected to shut down in Q2/Q3 2023.
What’s next for Ethereum users and developers?
Earlier this week, the Ethereum network welcomed the Sepolia testnet Beacon Chain. Goerli and Sepolia will also be the only two testnets that would be maintained post-merge. These testnets are relatively new and have an array of contributions to the network.
While Goerli is formulated for stakers to test their protocol upgrades, Sepoloa focuses on delivering a lightweight chain to sync to and interest with.
As the Ethereum network gets ready for ‘The Merge’ expected to take place in August, the price of ETH wasn’t at its best. The big bearish wave washed out all gains and pushed ETH to $1,100 at press time.