Ethereum network’s clone that is utilized for experimental and testing purposes, the Ropsten network, will get closed by this month’s end. Between the 15th and the 31st of December 2022, the infrastructure and node providers will stop the maintenance of Ropsten, as noted by the core developers at Ethereum.

Ropsten, a Proof-of-Stake Testnet of Ethereum, to Get Closed This Month

The huge majority of the existing validator nodes are scheduled to be closed from the 15th to the 31st of December this year. Following this, the infrastructure, client, or testing teams will no longer support Ropsten, as mentioned in an official blog published on the behalf of the team of Ethereum’s core developers, citing the services providers responsible for the maintenance of Ropsten.

The core developer of the network will additionally put an end to another test network named Rinkeby in the coming year. The team recommended that the developers should move Rinkeby apps to Sepolia or Georli as these test networks will keep on having support on the network.

In the ecosystem of Ethereum, many testnets permit the developers to implement applications as well as detect bugs for free in advance of their deployment on the mainnet.

However, they can get deprecated when there is no requirement for them. For many years, Rinkeby and Ropsten have been utilized on Ethereum’s main network. Following The Merge (the major upgrade of the network which converted its consensus mechanism from PoW to PoS) Rinkeby and Ropsten were considered to be inadequate replica atmospheres for the blockchain.

As the closure of the testnet has been started, the participation rates of the developers have been declining with time. Ethereum operates testnets to enable the developers to operate software in advance of launching them on the main network of Ethereum.

Fundamentally, the test networks play the role of copies to the mainnet of Ethereum, letting the developers test any modifications to their apps in advance of their launch in an additional high-stakes setting.

At the time when the Merge upgrade of Ethereum had not taken place, the entirety of the respective testnets was effective in testing and development.

In October 2022, Etherscan (a blockchain explorer) terminated providing support for Ropsten and Rinkeby. The developers at Ethereum consistently develop testnets, relying on the upgrades which are targeted by them for testing.

Interest in Ethereum Shows No Decrease

In November this year, the developers consented to launch the Shandong testnet. The respective testnet addresses a few Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) specified for the Shanghai upgrade – known as the impending big upgrade at the Ethereum network. Despite such a radical move, no decline has taken place in the demand or interest for Ethereum.

This has been evidenced just a couple of days back on the 29th of November when Phantom (a crypto wallet based on the Solana blockchain) declared to expand to the network of Ethereum. In addition to being the largest blockchain in the DeFi sector, Phantom additionally has a strategy to get to Polygon. Brandon Millman, Phantom’s CEO, remarked on this.

He stated that the platform has the potential as well as the things required for scaling and operating a wallet in terms of operational perspective. Simultaneous to this, the price of ETH (the native token of Ethereum) witnessed a spike of more than six percent in its market value during a previous couple of days.