The Ethereum team postponed the launch of the Holesky testnet

Ethereum developers were unable to launch the Holesky test network and scheduled a new attempt in two weeks.

We had a misconfiguration in the el genesis file and that led to the holesky network improperly launching. Some validators manually fixed the config and were able to start the chain, but not enough for the network to finalize. https://t.co/5fchlRBCP3

The launch of the testnet on September 15 was timed to coincide with the anniversary of The Merge — a large-scale update, as a result of which the blockchain migrated to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm.

According to developer Paritosh Jayanti, the failure occurred due to an incorrect configuration in the genesis source file. Some validators manually made changes and were able to start the chain, but this was not enough to finalize the network, he said.

"Sorry for the chaos! We will conduct several more checks and improve the documentation to make sure that this will not happen again," Jayanti wrote.

Sorry for the chaos! We'll add some more validation steps and better docs to try and make sure this doesn't happen again.

The new test network should replace Goerli, which has been operating since 2019. The developers will stop supporting the latter in early 2024. It is assumed that Holesky will work until 2028.

Holesky is designed for running-in of staking solutions, evaluation of infrastructure and protocols. Sepolia will continue to be used to test decentralized applications, smart contracts and other Ethereum Virtual Machine-related functions.

Holesky will differ from existing testnets by a significantly larger number of validators, the number of which will exceed the indicator of the main network. According to the developers, this will allow you to test solutions in more stringent conditions.

Another feature of Holesky will be 1.6 billion test ETH in circulation. Goerli has a limit of 120 million goeths, which corresponds to the market offer of the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization. The restriction periodically became a problem, increasing the cost of testing applications.

"It is possible to revive the network with a fix, but we decided that it is probably cleaner to start over, given that this will be a new testnet for many years to come," Jayanti commented for CoinDesk.

Holesky is designed to play an important role in the planned Ethereum hard fork called Dencun (Cancun-Deneb). According to the developer, the delay in launching the test network will not affect the timing of the update.

Recall that in June, the Ethereum team pre-formed future update packages for the execution and consensus levels.