Ethereum’s Holesky Testnet Achieves Finality After Two Weeks Amid Ongoing Pectra Testing

The Pectra upgrade launched on February 24, but a configuration bug in the client software caused a delay in achieving finality.

Key Points:

• Ethereum's Holesky testnet reached finality nearly two weeks after the Pectra upgrade, resolving a client-software configuration bug that had stalled finality since February 24.
• The Sepolia testnet, also implementing the Pectra upgrade, initially faced challenges with empty blocks caused by a faulty deposit contract, but these issues have now been fixed.

Ethereum’s Holesky testnet successfully reached finality on Monday, nearly two weeks after the Pectra upgrade was implemented.

Finality was confirmed at epoch 119,090 around 19:00 UTC, with more than two-thirds of validators actively securing the network. In blockchain terms, an epoch represents a set period during which a defined number of blocks are validated and added to the chain.

Finality, which ensures transactions are permanently locked within two epochs (approximately 13 minutes), had been missing since February 24 due to a configuration issue in the client software rather than the Pectra upgrade itself.

Recovery efforts over the past weeks helped restore finality, and developers are now working on stabilizing nodes and pruning outdated states to fully prepare the testnet for further Pectra testing.

Meanwhile, the Sepolia testnet, which is also running Pectra, initially reached finality but later encountered empty blocks caused by a flawed deposit contract. Exploiting this, an attacker sent zero-token transfers, but Ethereum developers confirmed that client teams have since resolved the issue.

The Pectra upgrade brings notable improvements, including gas payments in non-ETH tokens, account abstraction, and increased staking limits.