Holešky: Validators and Staking providers (Expected end of life 30th September, 2025). Client developers will also use Holesky to test gas limit increases and other protocol stress tests.
Sepolia: Application and tooling devs (Expected end of life 30th September, 2026)
Hoodi: Validators and Staking providers (Expected end of life 30th September, 2028)
Planned Sepolia replacement: Expected launch date of March 2026
Train station in Saukrasti, Latvia. Directly translated as “sunny shores”. One of most famous summer destinations in Latvia. As part of large “Rail Baltica” corruption scandal in 2024 which unveiled insane corruption and resulted half of countries train stations in unfinished renovation states. Saulkrasti test network symbolises hope for sunny shores of future efficient and transparent technologies.
Saulkrasti - train station in Latvia. Direct translation means “sunny shores”.
Give this country which no-one speaks about some love please.
Symbolism:
In 2024 there was a country wide scandal about “Rail Baltica” project of modernising railroad infrastructure. It appeared that unhidden corruption with clearly infeasible deliverables was put in to the budget, which ended up majority of country train stations being unreconstructed, instead of promised new in-line floors to enter trains, country-wide, citizens were forced to jump in to mud for a year, watching under-finished construction sites.
Sunny shores (Saulkrasti) network symbolises hope, that Ethereum solutions tested at this network will eventually contribute towards solving global inefficiencies and transparency in budget allocations & large scale projects delivery.
Naivasha - a town (and a lake and railway station of the same name) in Kenya where a core devs workshop was hosted last year. Pronounced Nai-vaa-shuh. In the Maasai language it means “that which heaves”, referring to the waves on lake Naivasha
Spoil from the excavation of the Dock and silt from its channels and waterways were dumped on nearby land, creating “The Mudchute” , which quickly established itself as a wildlife habitat and adventuring location for local children.
I don’t think we should replace sepolia in 2026, but in 2027, and sepolia should not go into LTS until 2027. My view is that Hoodi is a forced early deployment of the '26 chain, not a short-term holesky replacement.
This sets the performance standard that unless something exceptional happens that new testnets launch 2 years after the old one launched, and that unless there was a problem with the newer chain then the older goes into LTS for the next year and the newly launched chain fills the LTS chain’s role (community validators vs developer validators). So there is one year of 2 testnets + an LTS testnet, then one year of only two testnets, then the cycle repeats.