Prysmatic Labs prepares for its final planned ETH 2.0 testnet release

Development team Prysmatic Labs plans to launch the last scheduled version of its Ethereum 2.0 testnet tomorrow (Apr. 18). Unlike the team’s previous iterations, the new Topaz Testnet will represent the full Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 mainnet configuration and thus will require participating validators to deposit 32 testnet ETH on the Goerli network. Topaz will support just one client, Prysmatic Lab’s Prysm, at launch. But other clients will be free to join the network once they “update to the latest specification.”

Why it matters:

• Topaz is not the official Ethereum 2.0 multi-client testnet, but it’s another step forward in the development process. Ethereum developers plan to follow up on these production quality testnets operated by client teams with a full-scale multi-client testnet version of the Beacon Chain. These devs hope to run this testnet for up to three months before green lighting the Phase 0 mainnet launch, which could arrive at some point this summer.
• Prysmatic Labs is now on its third ETH 2.0 testnet iteration. After introducing a demo release of its Prysm client back in Oct. 2018, the team launched the Sapphire ETH 2.0 in May of last year. Sapphire has also supported multiple client implementations during its run, adding the Shasper client in Dec. 2019 and the Teku 2.0 client a few months ago.