Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently proposed a significant change to Ethereum’s underlying architecture. In a post shared on the Ethereum Magicians forum on Apr. 20, Buterin suggested that the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) be replaced with RISC-V, an open-source instruction set architecture, to form the new foundation for Ethereum smart contracts. The EVM, which is currently responsible for executing smart contract code across the Ethereum network, according to Buterin, has limitations that have become a long-term bottleneck for scaling.
RISC-V, a hardware-standard architecture already used in zero-knowledge EVMs, could potentially provide massive improvements in proving efficiency, especially for zero-knowledge-based scaling. It is currently used by ZK-EVMs to translate Ethereum operations before producing proofs. Buterin’s proposal would have developers write contracts that compile directly to RISC-V, bypassing this intermediary step. This could result in considerable improvements in overall performance and simplicity of Ethereum’s execution layer.
Despite the proposed changes, Ethereum programming languages like Solidity and Vyper would still be functional. However, they would be primarily focused on RISC-V rather than the EVM. Ethereum would also maintain its inter-contract communication, current account structure, and smart contract abstractions. The change, as per Buterin, would primarily affect the computation process at the back-end.
One of the critical aspects of this proposed change is that backward compatibility would be maintained. This means that legacy EVM contracts would continue to operate and interact with new RISC-V contracts. Buterin posits that this modification could potentially increase prover efficiency by over 50 times, or more in certain cases. This could help Ethereum maintain its competitive advantage over other faster, monolithic blockchains like Solana (SOL) and Sui (SUI).
This proposal comes at a time when Ethereum’s network usage is at multi-year lows. Data from Santiment shows that the average transaction fee dropped to $0.16 in April, the lowest since 2020. This drop is attributed to the declining L1 activity as users move to layer-2 networks for lower-cost execution. Previous improvements have largely focused on reducing L2 storage costs, but they have also significantly decreased L1 revenue.
Interestingly, while Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is slated for May 7, Buterin’s call for a fundamental change suggests that minor changes might not be enough. To improve long-term scalability and stay competitive with high-performance chains, Ethereum may need to rethink the core features of its smart contract system. This proposal by Buterin could be the first step in a series of significant structural changes to Ethereum’s underlying architecture.
