Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH moves above $2,000 as developers plan to discontinue Holesky testnet in September

Ethereum (ETH) traded above $2,020 on Wednesday following an announcement from the Ethereum Foundation (EF) that it will discontinue the Holesky testnet on September 30.

Ethereum Foundation set to dismiss Holesky testnet, Hoodi to serve as alternative

In a recent blog post, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced that it would discontinue the Holesky testnet on September 30 after it "experienced extensive inactivity leaks as part of its recovery mechanism." The recently launched Hoodi testnet, which went live on Monday, will replace Holesky.

Testnets or test networks are environments where developers can test planned code changes or technical upgrades before deploying them on the mainnet. Holesky was meant for validators and staking providers to test new network features, but Hoodi will serve that function from now on.

Holesky encountered issues when testing the Pectra upgrade on February 24 due to a bug in the configuration of validator clients that prevented transactions from finalizing. After weeks of attempts to recover Holesky, the network reached finality last week, but issues with its recovery mechanism clogged up its validator exit queue.

"The Holesky network has since then finalized, but the exited validators would take approximately one year to fully be removed from the validator set," the EF wrote. "While stakers can test deposits, consolidations and all other Pectra features, the size of the exit queue prevents Holesky from being used to test the full validator life cycle within a reasonable timeframe," they added.

Developers plan to activate Pectra on Hoodi on March 26 and eventually ship it onto mainnet 30 days later — if the upgrade goes smoothly.

"Moving forward, staking operators and infrastructure providers should use Hoodi for validator testing," the EF continued.

Pectra will introduce several features to Ethereum, including increased staking limits, account recovery options, sponsored transactions and payment of gas fees in other ERC-20 tokens apart from ETH.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH eyes move to $2,200 but faces a key hurdle at $2,070

Ethereum sustained $83.17 million in futures liquidations in the past 24 hours, per Coinglass data. The total amount of liquidated long and short positions accounted for $16.90 million and $66.27 million, respectively.

ETH surged above a descending trendline resistance extending from February 25 and is looking to recover the $2,070 level. The rise follows a ten-day period of sustained consolidation where ETH failed to move above the $2,000 psychological level.

ETH/USDT daily chart

If ETH holds the descending trendline as support, it could rally above $2,070 to tackle the $2,200 critical resistance. However, a firm rejection at $2,070 could see ETH decline toward the support at $1,818.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) lines are trending upward but still below their neutral levels. This indicates a weakening bearish momentum.

A daily candlestick close below $1,818 will invalidate the thesis and send ETH toward the support at $1,500.