Ethereum's Ropsten Testnet to Retire by End of December
Ethereum’s Ropsten testnet, a key experimental network for Ethereum, will officially retire at the end of December.
Ethereum's Ropsten Testnet to Retire by End of December
According to an announcement from the Ethereum development team, the complete shutdown of Ropsten’s infrastructure will be extended for two weeks from December 15th to December 31st. The reason for Ropsten's retirement is attributed to the Ethereum network’s transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism with The Merge upgrade. This shift has rendered older testnets like Ropsten increasingly outdated and inaccurate.
The Ethereum team also noted that a second testnet, Rinkeby, will cease operations in mid-2023. Users and developers are advised to transition to the supported testnets, Goerli and Sepolia.
As previously announced, the Ropsten testnet is shutting down 🌅
— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) November 30, 2022
Several infra providers & validators have already stopped supporting the network, and we expect the remaining ones to turn off their nodes in the coming weeks.
Full announcement here: https://t.co/NeuiIyD02s
Ethereum's ecosystem previously established several testnets to help developers experiment with applications and debug issues before deployment on the mainnet. However, the question arises whether these testnets remain necessary.
For the average user, the shutdown of an Ethereum testnet may not seem significant, as it mainly affects testing environments and interaction with trading platforms. Users can easily switch to other existing testnets that are still supported.
