As previously announced, the Ropsten community has been deprecated and can be shut down within the coming weeks. Over the previous few months, infrastructure suppliers have step by step stopped supporting the community and validator participation charges have been steadily declining.
The overwhelming majority of remaining validator nodes can be shut down through the December 15-31, 2022 interval. After this, Ropsten will now not be supported by shopper, testing or infrastructure groups.
As a reminder, the following testnet to be sundown is Rinkeby. The community can be reside till mid-2023 to offer customers and utility builders the prospect emigrate to both Goerli or Sepolia. That stated, Rinkeby doesn’t help The Merge, nor will it help future community upgrades. It’s now not a feature-equivalent reproduction of the Ethereum mainnet.
The Merge and legacy testnet deprecations have offered a possibility 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. If 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