Share this article

Ethereum 2.0 Testnet Medalla Goes Live With 20,000 Validators

Medalla, the final testnet before the anticipated launch of Ethereum 2.0 later this year, is now live, the Ethereum Foundation announced Tuesday.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 9:39 a.m. Published Aug 4, 2020, 3:00 p.m.
Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi (CoinDesk archives)
Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi (CoinDesk archives)

Ethereum 2.0’s “final” and “official” public testnet, Medalla, is now live, according to the Ethereum Foundation.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newsletters

  • Medalla is the final testnet before the launch of the Eth 2.0 network, which is tentatively expected by year’s end.
  • The correct number of peers joined the tesnet to consider it workable, according to a tweet from the Ethereum Foundation’s Hudson Jameson.
  • As reported by CoinDesk, Medalla was one of many Eth 2.0 testnets over 2019 and 2020. Unlike the other testnets, however, Medalla was public – meaning network validators were not centrally coordinated by developer teams.
  • Over 20,000 validators have joined the network with some 650,000 ether staked, according to the Beaconcha.in block explorer. (Each testnet uses its own tokens not equivalent to real ETH.)
  • Medalla was joined by five clients including Prysmatic Labs’ Prysm, ChainSafe’s Lodestar, PegaSys’ Teku, Status’ Nimbus and Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse.
  • Eth 2.0 encapsulates years of research to switch the current Proof-of-Work (PoW) Ethereum network to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. The expected launch later this year will be phase 0 of a multiyear overhaul.

Read more: Ethereum 2.0 Developers Announce ‘Final’ Testnet Before Network Launch

More For You

Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

GP Basic Image

What to know:

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

More For You

Solana’s Drift Launches v3, With 10x Faster Trades

Drift (b52_Tresa/Pixabay)

With v3, the team says that about 85% of market orders will fill in under half a second, and liquidity will deepen enough to bring slippage on larger trades down to around 0.02%.

What to know:

  • Drift, one of the largest perpetuals trading platforms on Solana, has launched Drift v3, a major upgrade meant to make on-chain trading feel as fast and smooth as using a centralized exchange.
  • The new version will deliver 10-times faster trade execution thanks to a rebuilt backend, marking the largest performance jump the project has made so far.