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A Date for Final Ethereum 2.0 Public Testnet Announced; Attacknets Live

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Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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Last updated:

June 26, 2023

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Step by step, or rather one testnet by another, Ethereum 2.0 (ETH 2.0) seems to be on track for launch – as the date for the final public testnet has been announced.

Ethereum Core developer Danny Ryan posted on the testnet’s Discord site that the next multi-client testnet is fast-approaching, now being just two weeks away, on August 4, if everything goes according to the plan.

“After discussions with client teams, the next multi-client testnet (mainnet config including min validator numbers) will have a min genesis time of [August] 4,” Ryan wrote.

He further added that the likely time would be 13:00 or 14:00 UTC, but also that additional information will be made available to the public in the “next couple of days.”

Furthermore, “the test educational deposit interface aimed at hobbyists” called Launchpad will also be included in this testnet. Product Manager at Ethereum-focused blockchain company ConsenSys, Jimmy Ragosa, posted back in May that the official Ethereum 2.0 deposit launchpad had been open-sourced, providing a UX (user experience) review.

This is supposedly the last public testnet leading to the long-awaited and much-discussed first phase of ETH 2.0, called Phase 0 or Beacon Chain. As reported previously, this is far from being the only testnet the developers launched so far, as they’ve been going live with both single-client and multi-client testnets for months now.

Back in April, the Sapphire testnet was launched, allowing users to make small deposits, which was then followed by Topaz in May and Onyx in June. A coder from Prysm, Terence Tsao, shared a few days ago a blog post containing certain issues with and subsequent fixes for Onyx, also saying that the developers are “so close to official multiclient testnet.”

Also in April, Prysm and Lighthouse released the multi-client testnet Schlesi, which was followed by Witti and then Altona, launched in early July.

Altona “appears to be stable,” Afri Schoedon, release manager at blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies, said recently, adding that the official multi-client testnet Medalla would be coming “very soon, which would mark the final step towards an Ethereum 2.0 mainnet launch.”

As reported, Schoedon also gave November as the possible Phase 0 launch time, provided that no critical issues are found.

This Monday, Ryan announced that the attacknets are live, calling for anybody willing to try and attack the small, four-node versions of the Lighthouse and Prysm ETH 2.0 clients, with the possible reward of USD 5,000 for each network awaiting successful white hat hackers.