Was it ever alive? As far as I know lo0, eth0 and others where never accessible as a file interface and we still rely on them. Is there something to gain to give them a name on the filesystem?
ls /sys/class/net
I think it's quite messy and inconsistent that some network interface attributes are only in sysfs, and others are only accessible via AF_NETLINK (usually via the "ip" tool). But it's there.