Ethereum’s Holesky Testnet Restored After Pectra Issues

Ethereum’s Holesky testnet has finally regained finality after nearly two weeks of non-finalization, marking a crucial step in recovering from disruptions caused during the Pectra upgrade testing.

On March 11, with over two-thirds of validators participating, Holesky successfully reached finality at Epoch 119090 at around 3 PM ET.

Finality ensures transactions are permanently confirmed and irreversible, typically occurring within two epochs (13 minutes).

What Caused Holesky’s Finalization Issues?

The issue first emerged on February 24, when Holesky faced disruptions during Pectra upgrade testing. However, the problem wasn’t caused by Pectra itself—instead, a configuration bug in the client software components led to non-finalization.

After weeks of restoration efforts, Holesky is now back on track, but developers are still pruning old states and ensuring node stability before it is fully operational for testing.

Sepolia Testnet Also Faced Pectra Challenges

Alongside Holesky, Ethereum developers deployed Pectra on Sepolia, another major testnet. While Sepolia initially gained finality, it later ran into issues due to a custom deposit contract bug, which resulted in empty blocks being mined.

🔹 Cause of the issue? A zero-token transfer exploit
🔹 Attacker triggered the bug by sending zero-token transfers to the deposit contract
🔹 Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden confirmed that this edge case was overlooked

A hotfix was deployed within six hours, with Ethereum client teams working together to resolve the problem.

What’s Next for Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade?

Despite the testnet setbacks, Ethereum developers remain focused on delivering Pectra’s enhancements, which include:

✅ Gas payments in tokens other than ETH
✅ Account abstraction for improved smart contract capabilities
✅ Increased staking limits for validators

With Holesky now back to finality, Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade testing is progressing, setting the stage for further refinements before its mainnet rollout.