Ethereum developers have decided to postpone the highly anticipated Pectra upgrade following issues encountered during testing on the network’s primary testnets, Holesky and Sepolia.
The decision was made during a developer call on Thursday, March 6, after two test cases revealed misconfigurations, necessitating further testing before the upgrade goes live on the Ethereum mainnet.
Positioned as Ethereum’s most significant upgrade since 2024, Pectra aims to increase transaction speeds and ease of use for both users and operators. Initially, developers planned to finalize a mainnet launch date for Pectra during a March 6 call. However, issues encountered led to a consensus that additional testing was necessary.
Although the bugs were attributed to misconfigurations in the test environment rather than fundamental flaws in Pectra itself, the developers preferred to be cautious. Normally, successful tests on Holesky and Sepolia would be enough to decide on a mainnet launch, but the disruptions led to a change in strategy.
“We need more information before we can set a concrete date,” said Alex Stokes, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation who moderated today’s call.
To fix the testing glitches, developers plan to create a “shadow fork” of the Holesky testnet, which has been down since the previous Pectra test. The misconfigurations caused a significant portion of Holesky’s validators to go offline, rendering the network unable to properly process transactions.
A shadow fork serves as a temporary copy of a blockchain network, allowing developers, stake pools, and application builders to test Pectra without relying on the main Holesky testnet. According to Stokes, “Anyone who wants to test on Holesky can test on this network.”
Meanwhile, work continues to restore the primary Holesky network, which has required 67% of validators to reconfigure their systems. Developers estimate that Holesky will be fully operational by March 28, at which point further decisions regarding Pectra’s mainnet deployment will be made.
*This is not investment advice.
