We’re excited to announce that Hekla, our latest testnet with EIP-4844 enabled, is now open to the public!

Let’s see what’s new with Hekla.

Here are some noticeable changes on Hekla:

• Archive L1 node is no longer required to run a Taiko L1 node.

• Enabled EIP-4844 blobs for DA with compression.

• Enabled snap sync for the latest unverified L2 block in taiko-geth.

• Adjusted the L2 block gas issuance to 60M gas per 12 seconds, which is 4x of Ethereum’s; changed L2 block gas limit to 240M gas which is 8x Ethereum’s.

• Fine-tuned our EIP1559 configurations.

• Improved guardian prover infrastructure.

• Enabled 2-step claiming of L2-to-L1 bridged tokens.

• Added risc0 verifier contract.

• Fixed a few protocol bugs.

To see a full list of changes, check out Taiko protocol 1.4.0 release note.

Besides these changes, Hekla features the same Based Contestable Rollup (BCR) mechanism as Katla. Taiko will launch on mainnet utilizing the BCR architecture.

As for what you can do on Hekla, as always, you can swap, use various ecosystem dapps, deploy contracts, run a node, propose, and prove blocks — all permissionlessly. To do all of that, visit our updated documentation here.

Katla will be deprecated on May 10th.

Katla was intended to be the final testnet before our planned mainnet launch. However, we took the opportunity to introduce Hekla to thoroughly test the additional features and improvements mentioned above.

We understand and appreciate your enthusiasm to see and use Taiko on mainnet. We thank you, our incredible community of more than a million people, for your relentless support throughout Taiko’s journey. Rest assured: We’re moving as quickly as possible to deliver the first ever based rollup and bring Ethereum to everyone around the world.

Mainnet very soon. 🫡

• Docs: https://docs.taiko.xyz.

• RPC: https://rpc.hekla.taiko.xyz.

• Explorer: explorer.hekla.taiko.xyz

• Bridge: https://bridge.hekla.taiko.xyz.

Explore open positions on our job board.

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.