Ethereum Foundation announced plans to cease the Goerli Testnet either three months following the Goerli Dencun fork or one month after the mainnet Dencun fork, whichever is later.
This move is expected to largely affect the stability of the network as client and testing teams hold the majority stake in Goerli.
Per Ethereum’s blog released yesterday, the Dencun upgrade will be the last for Goerli. This measure will help prevent disruption easily caused by the future termination of the Goerli validators.
In the blog post, the Foundation advised developers of applications to transition to the Sepolia test network, whose validator set gives a hugely stable test environment.
The document also gives an alternative solution;
“Alternatively, many local development environments allow for testing against copies of the Ethereum mainnet state.”
As for stakers and infrastructure providers, Ethereum advises them to migrate to the Holesky testnet, which allows anyone to run validator. The alternative is the Ephemery testnet, which rests weekly and is good for “lightweight end-to-end testing of the validator lifecycle.”
Goerli, Ethereum’s first multi-client testnet, has been a critical part of the ETH community. It was born when a random group of people showed up to solve key technical problems. The blog hailed one of the key contributors to this Goerli community, Afro Schoedon.
The dates for the Dencun upgrade that will mark the beginning of the dusk for Ethereum have yet to be set but will be announced later.
The news yesterday did not hugely affect Ethereum’s prices immediately. However, ETH started rising on December 1 by jumping above $2,100.
While it’s not feasible to conclude that the current price actions in Ethereum result from the Goerli halt news, the future implementation of the upgrade will cause a noteworthy shift in market dynamics.