Ethereum developers on Thursday appeared successful in their second attempt to launch the Holesky test network, after an attempt earlier this month failed.

As of 8:23 am ET, the process appeared to be going smoothly, though the developers signaled that the “participation rate” would need to reach at least 66% before the launch is finalized.

On a livestream on YouTube from the EthStaker, one of the developers said, around 8:10 am ET, “It looks like the launch is successful.”

“Not going to have to build a third one!” responded another developer on the call.

Welcome to the world #Holesky 😀
The largest public testnet we've had to date!

FYI: Holešovice has two train stations, fits that we had to launch the testnet twice 😀
photo credits: @skylenet pic.twitter.com/wPSR4Gbhtq

— parithosh | 🐼👉👈🐼 (@parithosh_j) September 28, 2023

The new Holesky network is supposed to help developers test some ambitious scaling plans for the main Ethereum blockchain, replacing the Goerli testnet that is currently in wide use. The new testnet will allow twice as many validators to join the network compared to mainnet, and was designed to address Goerli’s testnet ETH supply issues.

The original planned launch date of Holesky, on Sept. 15, was supposed to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Ethereum’s historic “Merge” transition to a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake blockchain. But that didn’t happen due to some misconfiguration issues, according to developers.

Developers decided to postpone the launch with a fresh start, “considering it’ll be a new network that’ll live for years,” Parithosh Jayanthi, a devops engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, told CoinDesk in an interview after the botched earlier attempt.

Holesky will be important for Ethereum’s upcoming hard fork, Dencun, where proto-danksharding, a technical feature which will reduce gas fees, is supposed to go live.