The Ropsten network, a replica of the main Ethereum network used for testing and experimentation, might be shut down by the end of this month.
Ropsten’s maintenance will stop between December 15 and December 31, according to Ethereum core developers. In an official blog post, the Ethereum core team referred to the companies that support Ropsten. “The vast majority of remaining validator nodes will be shut down during the December 15–31, 2022 period. After this, Ropsten will no longer be supported by client, testing or infrastructure teams,”
In the middle of 2023, the developers of the Ethereum core will also shut down the Rinkeby test network. The group advised programmers to migrate their Rinkeby applications to the test networks Sepolia or Goerli, which will continue to be supported.
Several testnets are available in the Ethereum ecosystem to give developers the chance to release applications and check them for bugs before they are released on the mainnet. However, when they are no longer required, they can be deprecated.
Ropsten and Rinkeby have been employed for testing Ethereum updates before their deployment on the main network for many years. Ropsten and Rinkeby were considered inaccurate replica environments for the blockchain after The Merge, which changed Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
