Ethereum is an evolving protocol. Customer teams are upgrading the protocol to meet global demand while improving security and decentralization. Beyond protocol development, a crucial change in Ethereum was the abandonment of the “Eth1” and “Eth2” terminologies. In late 2021, core developers stopped using the terminologypreferring the “execution layer” and the “consensus layer” respectively. Today, like highlighted in our first quarter roadmap, ethereum.org performs the same movement.
- Eth1 → execution layer
- Eth2 → consensus layer
- Execution layer + consensus layer = Ethereum
Let’s see why.
Tl;dr;
- The terms Eth1 and Eth2 (Ethereum 2.0) are being phased out
- Execution layer (Eth1) and consensus layer (Eth2) are the new terminologies
- The roadmap for scaling Ethereum in a decentralized manner remains the same
- You don’t have to do anything
Where does Ethereum 2.0 come from?
Ethereum has always had, as part of its roadmap, plans to scale the network in a decentralized manner and to transition to proof of stake. At first, researchers worked on these efforts separately, but around 2018 they were combined into a single roadmap under the umbrella of “Ethereum 2.0”.
Under this roadmap, the existing proof-of-work chain (Eth1) would ultimately be deprecated via the difficulty bomb. Users and applications would migrate to a new proof-of-stake Ethereum chain, known as Eth2.
The article The road map to serenity by ConsenSys explains how things were going in early 2019.
What has changed?
As work began on the Tag stringit became clear that the phased roadmap for Ethereum 2.0 would take several years to be fully operational. This has led to a revival of proof-of-work on-chain research initiatives such as Stateless Ethereum, a paradigm that would remove the untouched state of the network to limit its growth rate.
The increased focus on the long-term sustainability of the proof-of-work chain, coupled with the realization that the Beacon chain would be ready much sooner than other components of the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, has led to a Proposed “early merger”. This proposal would launch the existing EVM chain as “Shard 0” of the Ethereum 2.0 system. Not only would this speed up the move to proof-of-stake, but it would also allow for a much smoother transition for applications, as the move to proof-of-stake could happen without any migration on their end.
Shortly after this proposal, Danny Ryan explored how we could achieve this by leveraging existing Eth1 clients in his network. Customer relationship Eth1+Eth2 job. This would significantly reduce the development work required to deliver a post-merge system and leverage existing clients, which have been tested for years on Mainnet. Around the same time, research on rollups as a viable and secure way to scale Ethereum has shown promise. Instead of waiting for a complex and uncertain scaling solution years from now, we could focus on scaling through rollups rather than piecemeal execution.
Want to dive deeper? Check out Danny Ryan’s “Eth1 + Eth2 = Ethereum” ETHGlobal Presentation.
Why can’t we just use Eth2?
Mental models
One of the major problems with the Eth2 brand is that it creates a broken mental model for new Ethereum users. They intuitively think that Eth1 comes first and Eth2 comes after. Or that Eth1 ceases to exist once Eth2 exists. Neither is true. By removing the Eth2 terminology, we prevent all future users from navigating this confusing mental model.
Inclusivity
As the Ethereum roadmap has evolved, Ethereum 2.0 has become an inaccurate representation of the Ethereum roadmap. Being careful and precise in our choice of words allows content on Ethereum to be understood by the widest possible audience.
Scam prevention
Unfortunately, bad actors have attempted to use the misnomer Eth2 to scam users by telling them to exchange their ETH for “ETH2” tokens or that they must somehow migrate their ETH before the Eth2 upgrade.
We hope this updated terminology will provide clarity to eliminate this scam vector and help make the ecosystem safer.
Staking Clarity
Some staking operators have also represented ETH staked on the Beacon Chain with the ticker “ETH2”. This creates potential confusion, since users of these services do not actually receive an “ETH2” token. No “ETH2” token exists; it simply represents their share in the participation of that specific supplier.
How does this update change the Ethereum roadmap?
This is not the case! It is important to understand that this name change represents a name change only. The current Ethereum roadmap features (i.e. the merger, fragmentation) and future features will always take place on the same timeline. Learn more about Ethereum upgrades.
Content Changes
ethereum.org
- Our “Eth2” resources (ethereum.org/en/eth2) are now our “Ethereum Upgrades” section.
- Individual features are now called “upgrades”
- All pages previously discussing Eth2 have been updated, with explanations included where appropriate
The rebranding was a mammoth task with many content changes. There are probably cases that we missed and there is still room for improvement. Do you notice something that needs to be repaired? Raise an issue or open a PR on the GitHub ethereum.org.
Staking Launch Platform
Updated February 1, 2022
As part of the big name change, we have also updated the Ethereum Staking Launchpad (formerly known as Eth2 Launchpad) to reflect changes in terminology. Please raise an issue or create a PR if we missed something.
Content translations
If you are able to translate content, we could use your help! We’ve updated this English content, but our 40+ additional languages are now outdated and still refer to Eth2 terminology. Consider getting involved.
We have updated our content compartments to include an Ethereum upgrades bucket. This will allow our hundreds of active contributors to the translation program to directly target these changes in order to publish accurate new information in all languages more quickly.
Want to help translate ethereum.org or Ethereum Staking Launchpad? Check our translation program.
One last note
For many, ethereum.org is considered a credible source of information maintained by our community. Naturally, many did not want to move away from Eth2 terminology until Ethereum.org did so. We hope our changes will encourage others to move away from Eth2’s outdated terminology. In doing so, you will help create consistency and clarity across the ecosystem, enabling more accurate mental models and making Ethereum more accessible.
Special thanks to Tim Beiko And Trent Van Epps whose writings have been referenced extensively in this article.
