Altona testnet for Ethereum 2.0 successfully launched

July 1, 2020 John Ethereum 0

  • The Altona testnet for Ethereum 2.0 was successfully launched with four different clients.
  • If the Altona testnet is successful, another testnet will be launched and then Ethereum 2.0 mainnet will be deployed. 

The Ethereum 2.0 launch is getting closer. A new milestone was reached yesterday with the launch of the multi-client testnet for Ethereum 2.0, known as Altona, which is named after a subway station in the city of Hamburg, Germany. If Altona goes according to the roadmap, a public test network will be launched and then the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet, the Beacon Chain, will be deployed.

Via his Twitter account, the coordinator of Ethereum 2.0, Danny Ryan, retweeted a post confirming that Altona is operating with four different clients: Prysmatic Labs, Sigma Prime, Nimbus and PegaSys. ChainSafe Systems’ client Lodestar will be added soon. For the first time these clients are working together with the updated specification (0.12) of the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet and are an indispensable step in determining the next stages of the project, according to Altona’s GitHub page:

Before such a mainnet can be launched, we need testnets that mimic mainnet conditions as good as possible. This requires us to have stable, long-term, and persistent testnets up and running that are supported by not only one client but multiple clients, ideally, all clients.

Altona will have the specifications of the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet

Altona differs from testnets like Topaz and Onyx because it is a multi-client testnet. At the same time it differs from the Schlesi testnet (50% Lighthouse client and 50% Prysm client) and Witti because it is the first to be deployed with four clients. However, its most important difference is that Altona is not a simulation of the mainnet specifications, but rather:

(…) a real persistent end-user testnet based on a slightly modified mainnet configuration. Everyone should be able to add validators and beacon chain nodes.

Therefore, Altona’s main objective is to demonstrate that the clients involved are willing to support the mainnet of the Beacon chain. According to Danny Ryan, Altona will initially be a developer-oriented testnet. In other words, it will be a “devnet” that focuses on ensuring that developers are able to test 0.12 software in “a production environment” and that eth2 engineers can work on any bugs that may arise.

In the last months, the expectations for the release of Ethereum 2.0 have been one of the main causes behind the strong performance of Ethereum. At the time of publication the ETH is priced at $227 with a 1.55% gain in the last 24 hours. In the weekly and monthly charts, ETH follows the general market sentiment and presents losses of 6.64% and 6.39% respectively.


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