“Ethereum 2.0” is no longer the name of a new network waiting to launch. It was an umbrella term for a series of upgrades designed to move Ethereum away from proof-of-work, improve its security and give it a more practical path to scale. The biggest of those changes, The Merge, took place on September 15, 2022.
There is now one Ethereum network. Its execution layer handles transactions and smart contracts, while its consensus layer uses proof-of-stake to agree on the state of the chain. The labels “Eth1” and “Eth2” were retired because they made that relationship sound like a split between separate networks or separate versions of ETH.
This guide explains what people originally meant by Ethereum 2.0, what The Merge actually changed, how validators work and why Ethereum’s current scaling plan looks very different from the shard-chain roadmap discussed a few years ago.
What did Ethereum 2.0 originally mean?
Ethereum 2.0 – also called Eth2 or, earlier, Serenity – described a multi-stage effort to redesign parts of Ethereum. The early roadmap combined several ideas: a proof-of-stake consensus layer, a Beacon Chain to coordinate validators and a set of shard chains intended to spread computation across the network.
Those ideas were never delivered as a single product called Ethereum 2.0. The roadmap evolved while engineers built and tested its components. The Beacon Chain launched in December 2020 and initially ran alongside Ethereum’s proof-of-work Mainnet. In 2022, The Merge joined the two systems: Mainnet kept its accounts, applications and transaction history, but the Beacon Chain became its consensus engine.
That is why calling today’s network “Ethereum 2.0” can be misleading. The transition did not create a replacement coin, and users did not need to exchange their ETH. The official account of The Merge is explicit on both points: there is one Ethereum, and ETH remained ETH throughout the upgrade.
What changed when Ethereum completed The Merge?
Before The Merge, miners used specialized computing equipment and electricity to compete for the right to add blocks. Ethereum now relies on validators that put ETH at stake and run software to participate in consensus.
The change ended proof-of-work block production on Ethereum Mainnet. It also reduced the network’s energy consumption by about 99.95%, according to Ethereum’s documentation. Blockchain Journal reported on the completed transition when the final proof-of-work block was produced in September 2022.
The Merge did not make every transaction faster or cheaper by itself. It changed the consensus mechanism, not the amount of block space available for ordinary Mainnet transactions. Gas fees still rise when demand for that limited space increases. Scaling has been pursued through separate upgrades and layer-2 networks.
It also did not erase Ethereum’s history. Contracts, balances and transactions remained on the same chain. Some miners supported a separate proof-of-work fork known as ETHW, but that fork is not the continuation of Ethereum’s canonical Mainnet. It is a different network with its own asset and risk profile.
How does proof-of-stake Ethereum work?
Proof-of-stake replaces the economic cost of mining with capital that can be penalized. A validator places ETH in Ethereum’s deposit contract and runs an execution client, a consensus client and validator software. That validator can then be selected to propose a block or asked to attest that another proposed block is valid and extends the chain it considers correct.
Ethereum divides time into 12-second slots and groups 32 slots into an epoch. One validator is selected to propose a block in each slot. Committees of other validators check the proposal and broadcast attestations. Those messages help the network choose the head of the chain and reach finality.
This is more precise than saying that coin owners simply “vote on transactions.” Validators re-execute transactions, check signatures and evaluate blocks according to Ethereum’s protocol rules. Honest participation can earn rewards. Going offline can lead to missed rewards and penalties, while certain conflicting or deliberately dishonest messages can result in slashing – the destruction of part of a validator’s stake.
Ethereum’s proof-of-stake documentation provides a technical walkthrough of block proposal, attestations, finality and the main attack defenses.
Do you need 32 ETH to stake?
A new validator needs at least 32 ETH to enter the activation queue. The deposit is only one requirement. The operator must also secure the validator keys, maintain the necessary clients, keep the system online, install updates and understand the conditions that can trigger penalties. Protocol changes introduced with Pectra allow qualifying validators to maintain a higher effective balance, so 32 ETH should be understood as the activation minimum rather than a universal cap.
Running an ordinary Ethereum node does not require 32 ETH. Nodes can verify and relay network data without proposing blocks or earning staking rewards. This distinction matters because “node” and “validator” are often used as if they meant the same thing.
Staking pools and third-party services may let users participate with less than 32 ETH, but they introduce additional risks. Depending on the arrangement, those can include smart-contract risk, custody risk, service downtime, fees, governance concentration and a liquid staking token that may trade away from the value of the underlying ETH. This article does not recommend a provider or staking product. Anyone considering one should verify who controls the keys, how withdrawals work and which losses the service does – or does not – cover.
The Ethereum Launchpad validator FAQ sets out the operational requirements for people who want to run their own validator.
What happened to Ethereum’s shard chains?
The original Ethereum 2.0 roadmap proposed splitting the network into multiple shard chains. Different groups of validators would process different portions of the workload, allowing the system to handle more activity without requiring every node to process everything.
That plan is no longer Ethereum’s route for scaling transaction execution. Layer-2 rollups developed faster than expected and began moving computation away from Mainnet while using Ethereum for settlement and security. As a result, the proposed execution shard chains – often described as 64 parallel chains – were dropped from the roadmap.
The word “sharding” has not disappeared entirely, but its role has changed. Current work is focused on making data available to rollups more efficiently rather than creating dozens of separate execution chains. Ethereum’s roadmap should be treated as an evolving engineering plan, not a fixed release schedule.
How does Ethereum scale now?
Ethereum’s current strategy is rollup-centric. Rollups execute or bundle transactions outside Mainnet and publish data or proofs back to Ethereum. This can lower costs and increase capacity while still drawing security from the base layer, although the guarantees vary between systems.
The Dencun upgrade in March 2024 introduced blob transactions through Proto-Danksharding. Blobs give rollups a cheaper, temporary place to publish data that the network can verify. They are not the old shard chains, and Proto-Danksharding is not full Danksharding.
Further work includes expanding blob capacity, improving data-availability sampling and reducing centralized components in rollup infrastructure. Some rollups still rely on a single sequencer or a limited set of provers, which creates censorship, availability or operational risks. Lower fees do not mean every layer-2 network has the same security model.
Ethereum’s official scaling overview tracks the deployed and planned parts of this approach. Readers looking for project-specific developments can also follow Blockchain Journal’s Ethereum news coverage.
Did The Merge affect the price of ETH?
A protocol upgrade can change Ethereum’s energy use, issuance, security assumptions or capacity. None of those changes makes the future market price of ETH predictable.
ETH trades in a global market influenced by liquidity, leverage, regulation, network activity, competition, macroeconomic conditions and investor expectations. The price may rise or fall even when a technical upgrade works as designed. Claims that The Merge or a future roadmap item must increase ETH’s value should be treated as speculation, not as a technical conclusion.
The practical takeaway
Ethereum 2.0 is best understood as a historical label for a roadmap that changed over time. Its most important promised transition – the move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake – is complete. The network now relies on validators, while its scaling strategy centers on rollups and blob data rather than the execution shard chains described in the original plan.
For users, there is no separate Eth2 coin to claim or migrate to. For prospective validators, 32 ETH is only the starting deposit, not the full operational requirement. And for anyone following the roadmap, the safest approach is to distinguish upgrades that are already live from research that may still change before implementation.
Editorial note: This guide was substantially reviewed and updated on August 30, 2026 to reflect The Merge, the retirement of the Eth2 terminology and Ethereum’s rollup-centric scaling roadmap. It is educational content, not investment advice.
