Ethereum's successful Pectra upgrade activation followed an extensive and troubled testing period involving three testnets: Holesky, Sepolia, and Hoodi

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It was deployed after rigorous testing on the Holesky, Sepolia, and Hoodi testnets, which initially faced configuration hiccups. Despite challenges on the testnets, including validator misconfigurations on Holesky, the Hoodi testnet deployment in March 2025 paved the way for today’s launch.

Ethereum’s upcoming major hard fork — the Pectra upgrade set for May 7 at 10:05 am UTC — has had an unusually troubled path to mainnet. For the largest hard fork in the blockchain’s history, it’s taken a year and a half to get to this point and failed to finalize properly on the first two testnets. And for the first time in Ethereum’s history, it required a third testnet to be set up in direct response to the issues.