As beforehand introduced, the Ropsten community has been deprecated and shall be shut down within the coming weeks. Over the previous few months, infrastructure suppliers have steadily stopped supporting the community and validator participation charges have been steadily declining.
The overwhelming majority of remaining validator nodes shall be shut down throughout the December 15-31, 2022 interval. After this, Ropsten will now not be supported by consumer, testing or infrastructure groups.
As a reminder, the subsequent testnet to be sundown is Rinkeby. The community shall be reside till mid-2023 to offer customers and software builders the possibility emigrate to both Goerli or Sepolia. That stated, Rinkeby doesn’t assist The Merge, nor will it assist future community upgrades. It’s now not a feature-equivalent duplicate of the Ethereum mainnet.
The Merge and legacy testnet deprecations have supplied a chance for the Ethereum group to rethink its broader strategy to check networks. Proposals round purpose-specific networks for stakers vs. builders, end-of-life norms for testnets and extra are being mentioned on Ethereum Magicians and in group calls. In case you have sturdy opinions about the way forward for Ethereum testnets, now could be the time to voice them!
Cowl picture by Micael Widell