Ethereum 2.0 Testnet Spadina Goes Live With A Three Day “Dress Rehearsal”

On Tuesday, September 29, Ethereum 2.0 developers launched a practice testnet dubbed Spadina, the final testnet before the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet release. Spadina is just another “dress rehearsal” before the mainnet launch for stakers to test and deposit the launch tools before the lunch of Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0.

In the official blog post, ETH 2.0 developer Danny Ryan wrote: “Spadina will be a (primarily) mainnet configuration testnet with a 3 day end-of-life (EOL). The main objective is to give us all another chance to go through one of the more difficult and risky parts of the process – deposits and genesis – before we reach mainnet. If all goes well, it should give us greater peace of mind before we jump into the real deal later this year”.

The test for Spadina was found successful as no issues appeared in the deposit process and the clients could successfully handle the blocks. However, the participation for the test remained relatively low with first few rounds of validations had only 34% of the stake joining the validation process.

This goes to show that several community members who signed up as validators had failed to bring their clients online during the launch. The developers also highlighted that this is an issue just like “nothing at stake” problem.

Since the testnet doesn’t involve real ETH, stakers care little about their capital slashed for remaining online. Maybe we can see more serious participation during the mainnet launch.

The Ethereum 2.0 will be a more efficient and scalable option to its predecessor while moving to a new Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus blockchain. The Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 launch will involve the Beacon Chain, a central coordinating system for the future multi-chained ETH 2.0 network.

As ETH investors start depositing the cryptocurrency in the Ethereum 2.0’s deposit contract, the Beacon chain will start validating these transactions. The Ethereum 2.0 will also unlock new opportunities for stakers to validate transactions and receive staking rewards in return.

Talking about the Spadina testnet and testing, the blog post mentions: “Note that Spadina has a 3-day end-of-life. Although the testnet might remain live for some amount of time after this, client teams, block explorers, and other key infrastructure providers will not be providing support for Spadina for longer than 3 days”.