The Great Ethereum Renamening

over 2 years ago (Edited)

A blog post came out today from the Ethereum Foundation that kinda left me shook. Could you ever imagine Ethereum's name changing? I feel like that would be absolutely insane. The first thing I thought of was an apocalyptic event called "The Renamening", similar to "The Flippening" that never really happened where Ethereum was going to overtake Bitcoin in dominance.

The Renamening

Ok, so now that I have your attention, Ethereum's name is not changing. What is changing is how the current version over Ethereum and the next version of Ethereum are being referred to. Ethereum is the first smart contract blockchain that has solidified itself in history as the true smart contract OG. It has been in development for years and the goal has always been to move away from Proof of Work consensus and migrate the blockchain to Proof of Stake consensus. With the massive amount of dapps and platforms built on and connected to the Ethereum network, this is a daunting task. Ethereum 2.0 has been the ultimate goal, making the blockchain insanely fast and scalable while reducing its carbon footprint. You know, because for some reason people are pretending to care about the environment. To keep it simple, the rename really doesn't mean anything for what's actually happening. It just simplifies things and gets us in line with how the developers refer to the different components. Ethereum as is exists now, Eth1, is now called the Execution Layer. Eth2, the future version, is now called the Consensus Layer. Combine the Execution Layer and the Consensus Layer and you get the new "Ethereum".

Simple enough, right? Ethereum 2.0 is just Ethereum. Therefore... Ethereum = Ethereum. Bam. Mind blown. You're welcome. But why kill the Eth2 term after so long? Well as you can see in the post, they highlight a lot of different directions and proposals that have influenced the way Ethereum is being developed. There's also some psychology to it if you think about it. They also highlighted that here. It's for the noobs. So the noobs won't be confused about what they're using. It's just Ethereum.

As Ethereum is being developed, the roadmap is evolving along the way. That kind of thing happens when you're dealing with developing such complex systems. There's not exactly a model that they can follow on how this is done. They're the first ones to do it and things can change in an instant. Respect the devs. The Eth2 name has also been used in a number of scams because the model was hard to understand. Now that issue is reduced.

Clarity. Clarity. People want transparency and clarity. They want to have a general understanding of what they're using. ETH staked on the Beacon chain has been represented on exchanged with the ETH2 ticker. Like on Coinbase, which is confusing. My brother even asked me what the hell ETH2 is after he staked.

The roadmap isn't changing. The plan is the same.

The Beacon chain has been running and the London fork completed. The next is the chain merge. The execution layer and the consensus layer getting married. The Merge. The end of Proof of Work mining on Ethereum nad the beginning of Proof of Stake consensus.

It'll go down something like this.

So there you have it. The Great Renamening. Ethereum will always be Ethereum. I hope you're picking some up cheap during this dip because the merge might be rocket fuel for ETH. Just sayin.

Peace.