Holesky Testnet with 1.7M validators will be Genesis ready by July

The Ethereum client teams have exceeded their initial goal of attracting 1.5 million validators, securing commitments for a total of 1.7 million validators. During the Holesky Coordination Call #1, representatives from Ethereum client teams agreed to provide approximately 800,000 validators. An additional 900,000 validators are expected to join from other Ethereum stakeholders, potentially including blockchain infrastructure companies. Therefore, the total validator set size on Holesky is projected to be around 1.7 million.

In order to accommodate this number of validators, each participating institution will receive roughly 100 million Holesky testnet ETH during network genesis. This generous allocation of ETH is designed to ensure a sufficient supply for faucets and validators, while mitigating concerns about potential supply overshoot.

Additionally, the team has chosen to align with mainnet values for predictable testing. Allocations are similar to those of the Genesis allocation tracker but have been adjusted to more practical figures. Seeding after the genesis phase is planned to be carried out using scripts.

The timeline for the Holesky testnet launch is well-structured. By the end of July, the team plans to finish all necessary testing to ensure that the consensus layer (CL) client can manage the anticipated large active validator set size for the network. The genesis state's creation is also expected to take place around the end of July, after which the review period will begin.

This review period is slated to conclude on August 7th, enabling clients to initiate releases with the state. Releases from all clients incorporating the --holesky flag are expected to be finalized by mid-August. Finally, the genesis of the Holesky chain is scheduled for mid-September, signifying the official launch of the new testnet.