Ethereum’s Future: A New Architecture for Smart Contracts
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested a major change to Ethereum’s smart contract system. he wants to replace the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V.This open-source architecture could make Ethereum faster and simpler.
Buterin shared his idea on the Ethereum Magicians forum. He believes the EVM has become a bottleneck. Switching to RISC-V could improve performance. RISC-V is used in zero-knowledge EVMs. It could make proving efficiency much better.
Currently, ZK-EVMs translate Ethereum operations into RISC-V. Buterin suggests developers write contracts that compile directly to RISC-V. This would skip an extra step. Popular languages like Solidity and Vyper would still work but focus on RISC-V.
The change would mainly affect the back-end computation. Ethereum’s inter-contract communication and account structure would stay the same. Legacy EVM contracts would still work with new RISC-V contracts. This could increase prover efficiency by over 50 times. This would help Ethereum compete with faster blockchains like Solana and Sui.
This change could increase prover efficiency by over 50 times. It would help Ethereum stay competitive with faster blockchains like Solana and Sui.
Buterin’s proposal comes as Ethereum’s network usage is at multi-year lows. Transaction fees dropped to $0.16 in April, the lowest since 2020. Users are moving to layer-2 networks for cheaper transactions.
Previous improvements focused on reducing L2 storage costs. But they also decreased L1 revenue.Buterin’s call for a basic change suggests that minor changes might not be enough. To improve long-term scalability, Ethereum may need to rethink its smart contract system.
Although Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is set for May 7, Buterin believes a deeper change is needed. This could help Ethereum maintain its competitive edge.
