Ethereum: Sepolia testnet successful, but Buterin admits…

ambcrypto.com:

As the Shanghai Upgrade inched closer, Ethereum [ETH]  developers successfully deployed the Sepolia Testnet on the blockchain. The Sepolia, the second Testnet, finalized its checkpoint at 56830 while the epoch activated at 56832. Also, several Ethereum developers confirmed that the Georli Testnet would be next before the final upgrade.

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The developers used the Testnet to simulate the staking withdrawal activity that would eventually happen with the  Shanghai Upgrade  on the Ethereum Mainnet. And, as soon as Georli is announced successful, validators who staked 32 ETH and above can withdraw their rewards.

It is noteworthy to reference that Ethereum also passed through similar stages of Testnets before the success of the  Merge  in 2022. 

At one point, the  validator count decreased significantly around the fourth quarter of 2022. However, the number of addresses holding 32 ETH and more improved from the downturn of January. According to Glassnode’s data, the addresses slightly decreased to 129,364 as of 25 February. This metric describes the Ethereum externally owned address qualified for validating on ETH 2.0.

Source: Glassnode

While the drop might have signaled a lack of interest, the on-chain analytic platform revealed only minimal  voluntary validator exit . Between 10 – 26 February, the number of departures was only 20 among the hundreds of thousands. 

Meanwhile, there have been fluctuations in the participation rate since the Ethereum Foundation confirmed the period the Shanghai Upgrade would occur. 

The participation rate measures validator responsiveness while tracking the proportion of missed blocks and total slots. At press, the participation rate was