Sepolia

Sepolia is a public Ethereum test network used for development and testing of smart contracts and decentralized applications before deployment to the Ethereum mainnet. It provides a sandbox environment with test ether that has no real-world value, allowing developers to experiment with contract deployment, transactions, and network behavior without risking funds. Sepolia is one of several public testnets maintained by the Ethereum community; others include Goerli, Ropsten, and Rinkeby.

Developers access Sepolia through Ethereum client software or wallet integrations configured to the Sepolia RPC endpoint. Testnet ether can be obtained from faucets operated by community projects or service providers. Transactions on Sepolia incur gas fees paid in test ether, mirroring mainnet economics in a risk-free setting.

Common uses include testing smart contracts, decentralized applications, layer-2 integrations, oracles, and network tooling. Sepolia mirrors the mainnet protocol rules closely enough for realistic testing, though it uses separate consensus and validator sets appropriate for a test environment.

Connection and status: Node operators and services publish Sepolia endpoints; developers should verify endpoint reliability and current network status via authoritative project pages or the Ethereum Foundation. As with other testnets, Sepolia's lifecycle is independent of the mainnet and testnet funds do not transfer to mainnet.

See also: Ethereum test networks, Goerli, Ropsten, Rinkeby.