The Ethereum Ropsten Testnet was announced to be shutting down on December 31st. The next testnet that will end is Rinkeby around mid-2023 to give users and app developers the opportunity to migrate to Goerli or Sepolia.
On November 30, the Ethereum Foundation announced on its official blog that the Ropsten testnet has begun to shut down gradually and is expected to be completely shut down between December 15 and 31. Over the past few months, developers have gradually stopped participating in the testnet and the participation rate has decreased.
As previously announced, the Ropsten testnet is shutting down Several infra providers & validators have already stopped supporting the network, and we expect the remaining ones to turn off their nodes in the coming weeks. Full announcement here: https://t.co/NeuiIyD02s
— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) November 30, 2022
At the same time, Ethereum will also close its Rinkeby testnet sometime in mid-2023, giving developers enough time to migrate the applications they run to the Goerli or Sepolia testnet.
All of these test networks played a key role in the development and testing of Ethereum prior to the major unified upgrade. The deprecation of the Unified and Legacy testnet has provided an opportunity for the Ethereum community to rethink its broader approach to test networks.
Proposals around dedicated staker versus developer networks and end-of-life standards for testnets are still being discussed on Ethereum Magicians and during community calls.
As previously reported, in October of this year, blockchain browser Etherscan closed infrastructure support for Rinkeby and Ropsten.
