Ethereum is a protocol present process vital modifications. Shopper groups are upgrading the protocol to scale to satisfy international demand whereas bettering 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 builders stopped utilizing the terminology, preferring ‘execution layer’ and ‘consensus layer’, respectively. At present, 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 must 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 community in a decentralized manner and to transition to proof-of-stake. Early on, researchers labored on these efforts individually, however round 2018 they had been mixed right into a single roadmap beneath 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 & purposes would migrate to a brand new, proof-of-stake Ethereum chain, often called 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 similar to Stateless Ethereum, a paradigm that might take away the untouched state from the community to certain its development price.
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 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 might 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 present Eth1 shoppers in his Eth1+Eth2 shopper relationship put up. This is able to massively scale back the event work required to ship a post-merge system and leverage current shoppers, which had been battle-tested for years on Mainnet. Across the identical time, analysis on rollups as a viable and safe approach to scale Ethereum proved promising. As a substitute of ready on a posh, unsure scaling answer years away, we might shift the main target in the direction of scaling through rollups as an alternative 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 downside 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 grow 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 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 convey readability to get rid of 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 usually are not really 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. Extra on the Ethereum upgrades.
Content material modifications
ethereum.org
- Our ‘Eth2’ assets (ethereum.org/en/eth2) are actually our ‘Ethereum upgrades’ part
- Particular person options are actually known as ‘upgrades’
- All pages beforehand discussing Eth2 have been up to date, with explanations included the place applicable
The rebrand was a large process with many content material modifications. There are doubtless situations we missed and enhancements nonetheless to be made. Discover one thing that wants fixing? Elevate a difficulty 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 often called the Eth2 Launchpad) to mirror the terminology modifications. Please elevate a difficulty or create a PR if we missed something.
Content material translations
For those who’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 are actually outdated and nonetheless reference Eth2 terminology. Please contemplate getting concerned.
We’ve up to date our content material buckets to incorporate an Ethereum upgrades bucket. This can empower our a whole lot of lively contributors to the Translation Program to instantly goal these modifications to publish the brand new correct data throughout languages extra rapidly.
Desirous about serving to to translate ethereum.org or the Ethereum Staking Launchpad? Try our translation program.
A ultimate observe
To many, ethereum.org is seen as a reputable supply of data maintained by our group. 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 due to Tim Beiko and Trent Van Epps whose writings had been closely referenced on this article.
