Testnet4 is unreliable

[NotATether]

When testnet4 was released, I was happy just like everyone else around here, but now that I'm trying to test something I've developed with Electrum addresses in testnet mode, I actually need to use testnet4 for something serious.

Faucets and acquiring bitcoins are not the issue. The issue is, strangely enough, that my faucet transactions never get confirmed, because nobody is mining them.

Everybody just seems to be mining empty blocks and there's a small chance that someone sweeps up the few transactions in there to confirm them.

What's the point of testnet if nobody can actually test stuff? Argh.

Might consider pointing my rented RTX 3050 at some pool with a GPU miner software and mine myself if this continues.

I know about signet, don't tell me to use it though because Electrum doesn't support it.

[Antidote47k]

That sounds frustrating, from what I’ve been reading I think aside from the lack of miners, the 20mins minimum difficulty rule on testnet4 may have unintentionally created an incentive for  miners to race for difficulty 1 blocks. Since an empty block is faster to construct and propagate, many simply mine empty blocks which leaves transactions sitting in the mempool. This seems to defeat the essential purpose of a test network where developers actually need transaction confirmations to test their software.

There are discussions about addressing this behavior cause it has become a usability problem. If developers have to resort to mining their own blocks just to get transactions confirmed then that is probably a sign that something in the incentives isn’t working as intended

https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/disabling-min-difficulty-blocks-on-testnet4/2350

[NotATether]

This seems to defeat the essential purpose of a test network where developers actually need transaction confirmations to test their software.

Exactly. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually starting to miss testnet3. That one was reliable at least, even if coins became so scarce that people were resorting to selling them.

Like I said, I would've simply used Signet and side-stepped all this nonsense, but it is not supported by Electrum which is part of the development I'm trying to test.

Edit: three transactions are now not going through and instead just get dropped from the mempool after some time. WTF?

[athanred]

What's the point of testnet if nobody can actually test stuff?

The same, as it is for many other altcoins: to mine it, and sell for BTCs: https://altquick.com/exchange/market/BitcoinTestnet4

They listed even signet: https://altquick.com/exchange/market/BitcoinSignet

Which means, that the time, when testnets were worthless, is gone. Use regtest, if you really want to test things. They won't list a coin, where six blocks per second can be produced.

Might consider pointing my rented RTX 3050 at some pool with a GPU miner software and mine myself if this continues.

Then try testnet5: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0095.md

Connected topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5586192.0

I know about signet, don't tell me to use it though because Electrum doesn't support it.

You can use even mainnet as a testnet, if you really need it. Your Electrum client will trust the data you feed it with. It is only an SPV client: you don't even need a real chain to make things tick; it would work as well in a pseudo-chain setup, with valid merkle trees. Also, if you start a fake mainnet chain, and mine things on top of block zero, then everything would work as well.

I'm actually starting to miss testnet3

Nobody stops you from using it. You can even use zero satoshis to test things, because why not. Everything is possible, if you can detach your client from the original test network, and mine a valid block on your CPU, after 20 minutes, no matter if you use testnet3 or testnet4. When you reconnect, all of these coins will be reorged, but well: do you want to test things, or do you want to have coins, which are accepted by other people? By being publicly accessible, all test coins gained non-zero value. Use regtest or a custom network, if you want to have truly worthless test coins.