The Sepolia testnet has successfully replicated withdrawals of staked ether (ETH) today despite some problems with old clients versions. “Sepolia testnet has successfully upgraded to Shappella! Some of the Prsym validators are offline due to the old geth version. They will come online in the next 10 mins”, the developer terence.eth wrote on Twitter.
“Shapella” is a combination of “Shanghai” (upgraded version of Execution) and “Cappella” (upgraded version of Consensus). The hard fork will mark Ethereum’s complete transition to a fully functional proof-of-stake network that enables validators to withdraw rewards earned from adding or approving blocks to the blockchain.
The test on Sepolia is designed to give developers another dress rehearsal of the withdrawal similar to what will happen on the main Ethereum blockchain. Testnets replicate a main blockchain, in this case Ethereum, and allow developers to test any changes to their apps in a low-stakes environment.
Sepolia is the second of three test networks to run through such a simulation. The next step for Ethererum developers is to run Shanghai on Goerli testnet, which is expected to take place in March. That will be the last rehearsal before the main blockchain can process the staking ETH withdrawals. Goerli’s test will also be the most anticipated as it is the largest testnet and it mimics the main operation of the Ethereum blockchain most accurately.