Last Updated on 19. September 2024 by Mario Oettler

In order to facilitate development, Ethereum provides different public test networks. Test networks can have different purposes:

1. Testing consensus software and changes in the consensus
2. Testing smart contracts and transactions

They should behave like the public main chain. But they have some peculiarities.

Test nets don’t get as old as the main chain. They can be reset from time to time. It also happens that they become deprecated and replaced after a few years.

Typically, public Test-ETH don’t cost anything. But in some cases, they are hard to obtain. Users can receive them through faucets that drip small amounts of them. In some cases, registration is necessary.

The most common public test network is:

• Sepolia: https://sepolia.etherscan.io/