The term "Eth2" originated around 2018 as a shorthand for consolidating two separate development tracks into a single upgrade vision. The label was practical at the time, but as the architecture evolved and the upgrade approach changed, it became a source of confusion and, eventually, a tool for fraud.

The Foundation announced on January 24, 2022 that it would stop using "Eth1" and "Eth2" across all official communications and documentation. The existing proof-of-work chain would be called the execution layer. The Beacon Chain, which became the consensus layer after the Merge, coordinates proof-of-stake consensus. Together, both layers constitute a single protocol called simply Ethereum. Core developers had already stopped using the old terms internally in late 2021. The public-facing shift followed when ethereum.org adopted the new naming in Q1 2022.

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Why the Old Terms Were Dropped

The Foundation cited three specific problems with the "Eth2" framing. First, it created a false impression that Ethereum 1 was being discontinued and replaced by a separate, successor network. Second, it became technically inaccurate once the development strategy shifted from launching a new chain to merging the Beacon Chain directly with the existing network. Third, it gave scammers a credible cover story.

"Malicious actors have attempted to use the Eth2 misnomer to scam users by telling them to swap their ETH for 'ETH2' tokens or that they must somehow migrate their ETH before the Eth2 upgrade," the Foundation wrote in its original announcement. No such migration was ever required. No new ETH token was ever issued. The ETH a user held before the upgrade is the same ETH they hold now.

The Foundation's position is direct on this point: "There is no ETH2, and no other legitimate token was introduced with The Merge."

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What Actually Changed Under the Hood

The Beacon Chain launched in December 2020 as the first operational component of the upgrade, allowing users to begin staking ETH before the broader transition was complete. Rather than eventually replacing the original network, the Beacon Chain was fused with it in an event called the Merge, which completed on September 15, 2022. Proof-of-work mining was deprecated that day, and proof-of-stake became the sole consensus mechanism.

The energy impact was substantial. Ethereum's total power consumption dropped by approximately 99.95% after the Merge, according to ethereum.org figures.

At the time of the Merge, nearly 400,000 validators were active on the network, each staking 32 ETH to participate in block production.

For anyone running a full node today, the architecture reflects the conceptual split the renaming formalized. A full node now requires two separate client applications: an execution client (such as Geth or Hyperledger Besu) and a consensus client (such as Prysm or Teku). The two communicate through a standardized interface called the Engine API.

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The Scam Risk Was Not Theoretical for African and South Asian Users

The terminology change matters most in markets where retail crypto users have limited access to consumer protection infrastructure. In Sub-Saharan Africa, crypto received approximately $100.6 billion in on-chain volume during the 12-month period from July 2021 to June 2022, with 95% of transactions classified as retail-scale. Around 80% of those transactions were under $1,000. A convincing pitch telling users to "upgrade" their ETH to a fake ETH2 token targeted people for whom those amounts represent meaningful savings.

Peer-to-peer exchange volume in Africa runs at roughly double that of any other region globally, reflecting thin formal banking coverage and a reliance on direct counterparty trades for remittances and savings.

In Ghana alone, P2P crypto trade volume grew nearly 400% over a two-year window, according to Paxful data cited by Chainalysis.

These users were operating with limited exposure to technical upgrade communications and were precisely the audience that scammers targeted with the ETH2 framing.

The developer community was also affected by the terminology confusion. Curricula and onboarding programs built around the "Eth2" label had to navigate a framework that no longer matched the actual architecture, creating friction for developers entering the ecosystem at exactly the moment adoption was accelerating across both regions.

Nigeria added more than 16,000 new Ethereum ecosystem developers and ranks third globally for Web3 developer growth.

India, with an estimated 18.5 million developers and hundreds of EVM-focused projects competing at the ETHIndia 2022 hackathon in Bangalore, is potentially the largest Web3 developer base in the world.

For both countries, moving from "Eth2" to execution layer and consensus layer gives training programs and onboarding curricula a stable, accurate vocabulary. Programs such as Web3Bridge in Nigeria and ETHIndia have already standardized on the new nomenclature, giving developers a consistent technical foundation for ecosystem education.

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No Roadmap Changes, Terminology Only

The Foundation was explicit that retiring the Eth2 label changed nothing about the technical upgrade schedule. The Merge, sharding, and all subsequent improvements remained on their original timelines.

CoinDesk followed the Foundation's lead and committed to phasing out Eth2 references in its own coverage, an early indicator that prominent industry outlets were moving to adopt the updated terminology.

As Ethereum's upgrade roadmap continues with further scalability work, the execution layer and consensus layer framing gives developers and users in every market a clearer, more durable way to understand what the protocol is and how it functions. The old label is gone. The network is the same.