A prominent Ethereum (ETH) developer is announcing a new testnet for the smart contract platform set to launch later this year.
In a lengthy thread, ETH developer Tim Beiko says that Holli, a new testnet, is planned for launch as a means of helping validators, node operators, stakers and miners.
First, Beiko explains what each category of user is looking for in a testnet.
“Testnets help three distinct groups of users: client developers, application developers and node operators/stakers/miners, but the needs of each of these are quite different!
Client developers want a ‘staging environment’ to deploy changes to before mainnet network upgrades, ideally with some usage (to trigger the code paths of the new changes).
Application developers want a staging environment for their product, where it can ideally interoperate with other contracts, so network effects matter for them.
Node operators want to make sure that when they run new software, things work as expected before they upgrade their mainnet nodes. For them, the code should ideally be as close to identical on testnets as mainnet.”
Beiko goes on to say that the Ethereum Foundation has already solved issues related to stakers and client developers with previous testnet launches, and notes that Holli, which has no specific release date, will be tailored to onboard application developers.
“So now, with things relatively taken care of for client teams and stakers, there’s still one big problem: how do we get application developers easy access to testnet ETH, and if we move to a new testnet, how do we get major projects to move over, to allow for composability?
A new testnet, Holli, is planned to launch later this year, and hopefully, we can figure out these things before then!”
