Protocol Announcements

March 18, 2024 update: The Dencun network upgrade successfully activated on the Ethereum mainnet on March 13, 2024. As per the original wording of this announcement, this would imply an April 13, 2024 sunset date for the Goerli testnet. That said, as of this writing, nearly all Goerli validators, which were run altruistically by various community members, have already been shut down. Goerli users & developers should therefore migrate to Sepolia or Holesky as soon as possible. In the coming months, Goerli, Ethereum's first multi-client testnet, will stop being supported by client and EF testing teams. The Dencun network upgrade will be the last one implemented on the network. **Either three months after the Goerli Dencun activation, or one month after the Dencun mainnet activation,

Withdrawals are coming! The Shapella network upgrade will activate on the Goerli network at epoch 162304, scheduled for 10:25:36 PM UTC on Mar. 14, 2023 Stakers & node operators should read this post as well as the Withdrawals FAQ The Zhejiang testnet can be used to test Shapella functionality prior to the Goerli upgrade A Shapella Community Call is scheduled for 15:00 UTC on Mar. 13, 2023 You can now sign up to receive emails for these upgrade announcements. Scroll to the bottom of the page to do so 📩 After a smooth Sepolia transition, the Shapella upgrade is now scheduled for the Goerli testnet. This is expected to be the last testnet upgrade before scheduling Shapella for the Ethereum mainnet. This upgrade follows The Merge

Withdrawals are coming! The Shapella network upgrade will activate on the Sepolia network at epoch 56832, scheduled for 4:04:48 AM UTC on Feb. 28, 2023 Stakers & node operators should read this post as well as the Withdrawals FAQ The Zhejiang testnet can be used to test Shapella functionality prior to the Sepolia upgrade After months of testing and an ephemeral devnet launch, the Shanghai/Capella (a.k.a. Shapella) network upgrade is now scheduled for deployment on Sepolia. This upgrade follows The Merge and enables validators to withdraw their stake from the Beacon Chain back to the execution layer. It also introduces new functionality to both the execution and consensus layer.

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As previously announced, the Ropsten network has been deprecated and will be shut down in the coming weeks. Over the past few months, infrastructure providers have gradually stopped supporting the network and validator participation rates have been steadily declining. The vast majority of remaining validator nodes will be shut down during the December 15-31, 2022 period. After this, Ropsten will no longer be supported by client, testing or infrastructure teams. As a reminder, the next testnet to be sunset is Rinkeby. The network will be live until mid-2023 to give users and application developers the chance to migrate to either Goerli or Sepolia. That said, Rinkeby does not support The Merge, nor will it support future network upgrades. It is no longer a feature-equivalent replica of the

The Merge is happening soon! This post explains how and when the upgrade will happen, along with the client versions compatible with it. Kiln, an Ethereum merge testnet launched in early 2022, will be shut down during the week of September 12, 2022. Ropsten and Rinkeby are also deprecated and scheduled to be sunset in Q4 2022 and Q3 2023 respectively. Users and developers should migrate to Goerli & Sepolia, which will keep being maintained and upgraded to reflect changes to the Ethereum mainnet for the forseable future. As previously announced, the Kiln, Ropsten and Rinkeby testnets are now deprecated and will be shut down over the coming months. **Kiln, which was launched for the purposes of testing post-merge Ethereum prior to existing testnets merging, will

Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake! The transition, known as The Merge, must first be activated on the Beacon Chain with the Bellatrix upgrade. After this, the proof-of-work chain will migrate to proof-of-stake upon hitting a specific Total Difficulty value. The Bellatrix upgrade is scheduled for epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain -- 11:34:47am UTC on Sept 6, 2022. The Terminal Total Difficulty value triggering The Merge is 58750000000000000000000, expected between Sept 10-20, 2022. Note: as announced earlier, the Kiln testnet is being sunset. Operators will shut down on September 6, 2022.

The Sepolia testnet will undergo a post-merge execution layer (EL) upgrade at block 1735371, expected on August 17, 2022 The upgrade will cause EL clients on the network to disconnect from peers which have not transitioned to proof-of-stake. It does not add additional functionality beyond this. Sepolia node operators must upgrade their execution layer client prior to block 1735371. A similar upgrade is expected on Goerli and the Ethereum mainnet once these networks have transitioned to proof-of-stake