Infura supports Goerli and Sepolia as Ethereum’s Long-lived Testnets
With the Merge around the corner, here is an important update on the Ethereum testnets, Goerli and Sepolia, Infura will support moving forward.
With the Ethereum Merge expected to happen soon now that the Bellatrix upgrade was completed, significant changes are coming to the Ethereum ecosystem. The Merge will push Ethereum into the new era of sustainable blockchain computation and show the world the power a decentralized community has to create sustainable innovation.
And while each one of us is proud that the Merge will practically eliminate Ethereum’s carbon footprint overnight and make the network more secure and more decentralized, there is another important evolution as a result of the Merge we’d like to highlight for all Infura users: Ethereum’s testnets.
With the deprecation of Ropsten, Kovan, and Rinkeby announced by the Ethereum Foundation, Goerli and Sepolia are the testnets developers across the ecosystem can turn to test and build their innovations before deploying their code to mainnet. At Infura we support this community driven shift in testnets and will also be deprecating Ropsten, Kovan, and Rinkeby on October 5th, 2022.
If you are currently using Ropsten, Kovan, or Rinkeby, now is the time to migrate any existing dapps that you want to continue to use to Goerli. Here is a helpful workshop you can watch to learn some of the key dapp developer considerations that includes a demo of how to deploy a pair of smart contracts to Goerli.
We look forward to continuing to support Goerli and Sepolia for Infura users. Here’s to all the testnets that have brought us all the way to the Merge!
The Evolution of Ethereum Testnets
Ethereum has a rich history of testnets you can learn about in this ConsenSys blog: The History of Ethereum Testnets. The first-ever public Ethereum test network was called, Olympic. The Olympic test network was referred to as “Ethereum 0.9” and had a network ID of 0. It was discontinued in July 2015, after the successful public launch of the Ethereum main network.
At Infura, we’ve been working hard to prepare all users for the Merge and we’ve been following the evolving state of testnets you can learn about in this blog: Ethereum Testnet Update for Infura Developers Ahead of the Merge. In it, we profile each testnet, Ropsten, Kovan, Rinkeby, Sepolia, and Goerli, when they will merge, where, and whether they’ll be deprecated.
Using Goerli or Sepolia with Infura
As we say farewell to Ropsten, Kovan, and Rinkeby, we are excited to continue supporting Goerli and Sepolia, two test networks that will be vital development environments for applications built on Ethereum.
Sepolia is the newest testnet and was the second to get a post-merge upgrade on July 6th, 2022. Note that Sepolia will support an initially limited number of parameters that we have highlighted in the Infura documentation.
The Goerli testnet was initially created to have a Clique Proof of Authority (PoA) network, allowing many participants to run signers. Goerli successfully merged on August 10th, 2022, and has continued to allow for anyone to participate in running this testnet, as it has an open validator set. The Goerli endpoints have remained on the Infura platform as a supported testnet. No action is needed from users if you are already using Goerli endpoints.
You can find Goerli and Sepolia endpoint URLs in our documentation and in your endpoints screen when you login. The status of both Goerli and Sepolia can be seen on status.infura.io.
If you’re using other ConsenSys products like Truffle or MetaMask, please note that Truffle Ganache supports forking of Goerli and Sepolia and that MetaMask will be adding support for Sepolia as well. You can follow ConsenSys, Truffle, and MetaMask on Twitter for updates.
Ready. Set. Merge!
With the Ethereum Merge scheduled to occur at Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) 58750000000000000000000 —somewhere between September 13th and 15th —the entire Infura team can’t wait for a world where Ethereum runs on PoS!
To prepare all users for the Merge, we published the Infura Developer’s Guide to the Merge you can access here. We also hosted 7 of webinars, each about important topics builders should know to be Merge-ready:
- The Merge: Where We Are, Where We Are Going
- Solo Stakers Forum: What You Need To Do To Get Ready
- MEV Considerations and Factors
- The Execution Client and the Consensus Client
- Running Multiple Validators and Staking as a Service
- Dapp Developer Considerations
- Quality Assurance and the Merge
Check out the replays, and if you have any questions regarding testnets or any other Merge-related issues, please reach out to us on Discord so we can help you.