Developing on test networks

Etherlink has two active test networks:

• Etherlink Ghostnet Testnet was the original Etherlink public test network. It runs on the Tezos Ghostnet test network.

  Ghostnet Testnet will be decommissioned soon, so developers should move to Shadownet Testnet before its sunset, see details.

• Etherlink Shadownet Testnet is the new Etherlink public test network. It runs on the Tezos Shadownet test network. Developers, node operators and infrastructure providers should migrate to this test network as soon as possible. Please support both Shadownet and Ghostnet Testnets during the transition period, and only deprecate Ghostnet infrastructure after the end of the sunset period.

For more technical details about these networks, see Network information.

For more information about the Tezos test networks that Etherlink test networks run on, see Testing on testnets on docs.tezos.com.

Using test networks

In most cases, you can use a test network in place of Mainnet by using the RPC URL of an EVM node that is running on that test network. You can use the public RPC node for the network for a small number of transactions (because it has a rate limit), or you can run your own EVM node on the test network by following the instructions in Running an Etherlink EVM node.

Then, use the RPC URL in transactions, as in this example, which uses the public RPC node for the Shadownet Testnet:

curl --request POST \
     --url https://node.shadownet.etherlink.com\
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "id": 1,
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "eth_gasPrice"
}
'

Examples of using test networks are on other pages in this documentation.