ETH Pectra test failed again! Mainnet upgrade in April may be postponed, ETH market sentiment hits bottom

Developers noticed that Sepolia Testnet started experiencing empty block issues.

Written by: DaFi Weaver, BlockTempo

Following the successful launch of Holesky Testnet, the Ethereum Pectra upgrade was activated as planned on the Sepolia Testnet yesterday (5th), marking the final critical stage before the mainnet upgrade. However, after several hours of testing, Sepolia began encountering errors, leading some developers to call for a delay in the scheduled mainnet upgrade around April 8, which may further dampen the already low sentiment of Ethereum.

Sepolia Testnet has an empty block issue

The reason for the error was that the developers noticed that the Sepolia Testnet was starting to have empty block issues.

The Ethereum Foundation stated that this is due to an error in the deposit contract configuration of the Sepolia Testnet, which has caused many execution layer clients to be unable to include transactions in blocks. It is emphasized that this is only a Testnet configuration issue, not a flaw in Pectra itself. In other words, this issue will not affect the Ethereum mainnet and only occurs in the Sepolia test environment.

Developers from the Ethereum Foundation stated that they 'identified the root cause of the problem within minutes' and quickly deployed a fix, restoring normal operation of the network. As of 10:00 (UTC+8) yesterday evening, validators had successfully resolved the issue, and network throughput returned to normal.

However, the test still raised concerns about whether Pectra has been fully tested. Because there was a chain fork issue in the Holesky Testnet on Ethereum before, which was caused by incorrectly set validators.

· Holesky Testnet, the first stage of testing

· Sepolia Testnet, the second phase of testing, will move to the mainnet upgrade if there are no issues.

Galaxy Digital Research Vice President: Mainnet upgrade needs to be postponed

Galaxy Digital Research Vice President Christine Kim said in an interview with CoinDesk:

I do think that the issues on the Holesky and Sepolia Testnets require a delay in the upgrade of the Pectra mainnet.

Kim pointed out that while developers may be ready, the entire Ethereum ecosystem, including smart contract applications and wallet service providers, also need to be prepared. He suggested that Ethereum developers should take this time to build additional test infrastructure to ensure the stability of the upgrade.

Ethereum core developers will hold a meeting on March 7 to determine the official launch date of the Pectra upgrade. If a delay is announced, it may trigger further community panic, especially given the current slump in ETH prices, major restructuring of the Ethereum Foundation organization, and competition from public chains like Solana, putting pressure on the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ethereum market sentiment fell to yearly lows

Santiment, a blockchain data analytics platform, noted that Ethereum market sentiment has fallen to its lowest point in the past year, mainly due to its recent performance lagging behind other major crypto assets.

However, for investors who patiently hold on to ETH, Santiment is optimistic that:

The current pessimism in the community may be a precursor to a bottoming out. Once the crypto market stabilizes, ETH may have a chance to rebound.

ETH up more than 4%

However, at the time of writing, ETH is now trading at $2,275, driven by the rise in Bitcoin, and has hit a high of $2,288 in the past 24 hours, up 4.67%, and has rebounded nearly 15% from the low of $1,993 a few days ago.