Ethereum is a protocol present process vital modifications. Shopper groups are upgrading the protocol to scale to satisfy world demand whereas bettering safety and decentralization. Past protocol improvement, a vital 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. At this time, 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 manner stays the identical
- You don’t have to do something
The place did Ethereum 2.0 come from?
Ethereum all the time 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 prevailing proof-of-work chain (Eth1) would ultimately be deprecated by way of the problem bomb. Customers & purposes would migrate to a brand new, proof-of-stake Ethereum chain, referred to 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 grew to become clear that the phased Ethereum 2.0 roadmap would take a number of years to ship absolutely. 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 progress fee.
The elevated deal with making the proof-of-work chain long-term sustainable paired with the conclusion that the Beacon Chain can be prepared a lot sooner than different elements of the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap led to an “Early Merge” proposal. This proposal would launch the prevailing 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 purposes, because the transfer to proof-of-stake might occur with none migration on their finish.
Shortly after this proposal, Danny Ryan explored how we might accomplish this by leveraging the prevailing Eth1 purchasers in his Eth1+Eth2 client relationship submit. This is able to massively scale back the event work required to ship a post-merge system and leverage current purchasers, which had been battle-tested for years on Mainnet. Across the identical time, research on rollups as a viable and safe approach to scale Ethereum proved promising. As an alternative of ready on a posh, unsure scaling answer years away, we might shift the main focus in direction of scaling by way of rollups as an alternative of sharded execution.
Need 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 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 turn out to be an inaccurate illustration of Ethereum’s roadmap. Being cautious and correct in our phrase alternative permits content material on Ethereum to be understood by the broadest viewers attainable.
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 need to by some means migrate their ETH earlier than the Eth2 improve.
We hope this up to date terminology will convey 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, on condition that customers of those companies should 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 necessary 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 acceptable
The rebrand was a large job with many content material modifications. There are possible cases 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 nice renaming, we have additionally up to date the Ethereum Staking Launchpad (previously referred to as the Eth2 Launchpad) to replicate the terminology modifications. Please raise an issue or create a PR if we missed anything.
Content material translations
If you happen to’re able to translating content material, we might 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 contemplate getting concerned.
We’ve up to date our content buckets to incorporate an Ethereum upgrades bucket. This may empower our tons of of energetic contributors to the Translation Program to immediately goal these modifications to publish the brand new correct data throughout languages extra rapidly.
Excited by serving to to translate ethereum.org or the Ethereum Staking Launchpad? Try our translation program.
A closing be aware
To many, ethereum.org is seen as a reputable supply of data 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’ll be serving to to create consistency and readability throughout the ecosystem, permitting for extra correct psychological fashions and making Ethereum extra accessible.
Particular because of Tim Beiko and Trent Van Epps whose writings had been closely referenced on this article.
