Ethereum developer Tim Beiko shares information on the Ethereum Kiln, Ropsten and Rinkeby testnets, which are scheduled to ride off into the sunset. According to Beiko, Ropsten and Rinkeby will gradually receive less support from infrastructure providers in the coming months, while Kiln will be the first to shut down.
As stated in a blog post, Kiln, an Ethereum Merge testnet launched in early 2022, will be shut down during the week of Sept. 12, 2022. While anyone can run a node on the network, boot nodes and validators maintained by client and testing teams, as well as infrastructure providers, will be turned off at that point. Kiln, which is now considered deprecated, was launched for testing post-Merge Ethereum before the existing testnets merge.
Ropsten and Rinkeby, which are also deprecated, are scheduled to ride off into the sunset in Q4, 2022, and Q3, 2023, respectively. While the networks will continue to operate until then, infrastructure providers may gradually restrict or remove access to Ropsten and Rinkeby on a shorter timeline.
Users and developers have been then advised to switch to Goerli and/or Sepolia, both of which are anticipated to be maintained and updated in line with Ethereum mainnet updates for the foreseeable future.
Stakers who wish to test protocol updates and developers who want to communicate with a sizable existing state are advised to use Goerli. Users and developers who desire a lighter-weight chain to sync to and interact with are advised to utilize Sepolia.
Ethereum Merge nears
On Sept. 6, the Ethereum Bellatrix hard fork went live at epoch 144,896, bringing the network one step closer to the much-anticipated Merge upgrade.
When Ethereum's proof-of-work (PoW) chain reaches the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) value of 58750000000000000000000, it is anticipated that the network will switch to the proof-of-stake (PoS) chain.
The execution layer update (Paris) is expected to happen between Sept. 10 and 20. The most recent estimate is at block height 15,540,293 on the ETH mainnet, or on about Sept. 15 at 12:30 a.m. (UTC).