Ethereum 2.0 Testnet Medalla Goes Live With 20,000 Validators

Medalla, the final testnet before the anticipated launch of Ethereum 2.0 later this year, is now live, the Ethereum Foundation announced Tuesday.

By William Foxley

Aug 4, 2020 at 3:00 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 9:39 a.m. UTC

aya, ethereum, foundation — Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi (CoinDesk archives)

William Foxley

Ethereum 2.0’s “final” and “official” public testnet, Medalla, is now live, according to the Ethereum Foundation.

Medalla is the final testnet before the launch of the Eth 2.0 network, which is tentatively expected by year’s end.
The correct number of peers joined the tesnet to consider it workable, according to a tweet from the Ethereum Foundation’s Hudson Jameson.
As reported by CoinDesk, Medalla was one of many Eth 2.0 testnets over 2019 and 2020. Unlike the other testnets, however, Medalla was public – meaning network validators were not centrally coordinated by developer teams.
Over 20,000 validators have joined the network with some 650,000 ether (ETH) staked, according to the Beaconcha.in block explorer. (Each testnet uses its own tokens not equivalent to real ETH.)
Medalla was joined by five clients including Prysmatic Labs’ Prysm, ChainSafe’s Lodestar, PegaSys’ Teku, Status’ Nimbus and Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse.
Eth 2.0 encapsulates years of research to switch the current Proof-of-Work (PoW) Ethereum network to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. The expected launch later this year will be phase 0 of a multiyear overhaul.

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