The great renaming: what happened to Eth2?

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Ethereum is a protocol present process important modifications. Shopper groups are upgrading the protocol to scale to fulfill world demand whereas enhancing safety and decentralization. Past protocol improvement, a crucial shift in Ethereum has been the motion away from ‘Eth1’ and ‘Eth2’ terminology. As of late 2021, core developers stopped using the terminology, preferring ‘execution layer’ and ‘consensus layer’, respectively. Right this moment, as highlighted in our Q1 roadmap, ethereum.org makes the identical shift.

Eth1 → execution layer
Eth2 → consensus layer
Execution layer + consensus layer = Ethereum

Let’s discover why.

Tl;dr;

The phrases Eth1 and Eth2 (Ethereum 2.0) are being phased out
Execution layer (Eth1) and consensus layer (Eth2) are the brand new terminologies
The roadmap to scale Ethereum in a decentralized method stays the identical
You don’t have to do something

The place did Ethereum 2.0 come from?

Ethereum at all times had, as a part of its roadmap, plans to scale the network in a decentralized way and to transition to proof-of-stake. Early on, researchers labored on these efforts individually, however round 2018 they had been combined into a single roadmap under the “Ethereum 2.0” umbrella.

As a part of that roadmap, the present proof-of-work chain (Eth1) would ultimately be deprecated through the issue bomb. Customers & functions would migrate to a brand new, proof-of-stake Ethereum chain, often known as Eth2.

The article The Roadmap to Serenity by ConsenSys explains how issues stood as of early 2019.

What modified?

As work started on the Beacon Chain, it turned clear that the phased Ethereum 2.0 roadmap would take a number of years to ship totally. This led to a revival of analysis initiatives on the proof-of-work chain equivalent to Stateless Ethereum, a paradigm that might take away the untouched state from the community to sure its development fee.

The elevated deal with making the proof-of-work chain long-term sustainable paired with the belief that the Beacon Chain could be prepared a lot sooner than different parts of the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap led to an “Early Merge” proposal. This proposal would launch the present EVM chain as “Shard 0” of the Ethereum 2.0 system. Not solely would this expedite the transfer to proof-of-stake, however it could additionally make for a a lot smoother transition for functions, because the transfer to proof-of-stake may occur with none migration on their finish.

Shortly after this proposal, Danny Ryan explored how we may accomplish this by leveraging the present Eth1 shoppers in his Eth1+Eth2 client relationship submit. This might massively scale back the event work required to ship a post-merge system and leverage present shoppers, which had been battle-tested for years on Mainnet. Across the identical time, research on rollups as a viable and safe method to scale Ethereum proved promising. As a substitute of ready on a fancy, unsure scaling answer years away, we may shift the main focus in direction of scaling through rollups as a substitute of sharded execution.

Wish to dive deeper? Try Danny Ryan’s “Eth1 + Eth2 = Ethereum” ETHGlobal presentation.

Why can’t we simply use Eth2?

Psychological fashions

One main drawback with the Eth2 branding is that it creates a damaged psychological mannequin for brand spanking new customers of Ethereum. They intuitively assume that Eth1 comes first and Eth2 comes after. Or that Eth1 ceases to exist as soon as Eth2 exists. Neither of those is true. By eradicating Eth2 terminology, we save all future customers from navigating this complicated psychological mannequin.

Inclusivity

Because the roadmap for Ethereum has developed, Ethereum 2.0 has change into an inaccurate illustration of Ethereum’s roadmap. Being cautious and correct in our phrase selection permits content material on Ethereum to be understood by the broadest viewers potential.

Rip-off prevention

Sadly, malicious actors have tried to make use of the Eth2 misnomer to rip-off customers by telling them to swap their ETH for ‘ETH2’ tokens or that they have to in some way migrate their ETH earlier than the Eth2 improve.

We hope this up to date terminology will carry readability to eradicate this rip-off vector and assist make the ecosystem safer.

Staking readability

Some staking operators have additionally represented ETH staked on the Beacon Chain with the ‘ETH2’ ticker. This creates potential confusion, provided that customers of those companies are usually not truly receiving an ‘ETH2’ token. No ‘ETH2’ token exists; it merely represents their share in that particular suppliers’ stake.

How does this replace change the Ethereum roadmap?

It doesn’t! It’s essential to know that this renaming represents a change in naming solely. The options on Ethereum’s present roadmap (i.e. the merge, sharding) and future options will nonetheless occur on the identical timeline. More on the Ethereum upgrades.

Content material modifications

ethereum.org

Our ‘Eth2’ sources (ethereum.org/en/eth2) at the moment are our ‘Ethereum upgrades’ part
Particular person options at the moment are known as ‘upgrades’
All pages beforehand discussing Eth2 have been up to date, with explanations included the place applicable

The rebrand was an enormous job with many content material modifications. There are seemingly situations we missed and enhancements nonetheless to be made. Discover one thing that wants fixing? Raise an issue or open a PR on the ethereum.org GitHub.

Staking Launchpad

Replace February 1, 2022

As a part of the good renaming, we have additionally up to date the Ethereum Staking Launchpad (previously often known as the Eth2 Launchpad) to mirror the terminology modifications. Please raise an issue or create a PR if we missed anything.

Content material translations

In the event you’re able to translating content material, we may use your assist! We’ve up to date this content material in English, however our 40+ further languages at the moment are outdated and nonetheless reference Eth2 terminology. Please take into account getting concerned.

We’ve up to date our content buckets to incorporate an Ethereum upgrades bucket. This can empower our a whole lot of energetic contributors to the Translation Program to immediately goal these modifications to publish the brand new correct data throughout languages extra shortly.

Considering serving to to translate ethereum.org or the Ethereum Staking Launchpad? Try our translation program.

A ultimate notice

To many, ethereum.org is seen as a reputable supply of knowledge maintained by our neighborhood. Understandably, many didn’t wish to shift away from Eth2 terminology till ethereum.org did. We hope that our modifications will encourage others to maneuver away from the outdated Eth2 terminology. By doing so, you can be serving to to create consistency and readability throughout the ecosystem, permitting for extra correct psychological fashions and making Ethereum extra accessible.