The co-founder Ethereum Vitalik Buterin proposed to replace the Ethereum virtual machine with RISC-V, an overall architecture of open source instructions, as a new foundation for Ethereum intelligent contracts.
In an article shared on the Ethereum magicians forum on April 20, Buerin argued that the switch could considerably improve the performance and simplicity of the Ethereum (ETH) execution layer. The EVM is responsible for the execution of the intelligent contract code on the Ethereum network.
According to Buterin, its limits have become a long -term bottleneck for scaling. He thinks that replacing it with RISC-V, a standard architecture of equipment already used in zero knowledge EVMs, could make massive improvements in the performance of efficiency, in particular for scaling zero knowledge.
ZK-EVMS currently translates Ethereum operations in RISC-V before producing evidence. Buterin recommends that developers write contracts that compile directly at RISC-V, bypassing this intermediate stage. Popular Ethereum programming languages like Solidey and Vyper, he said, would always be functional but would focus on RISC-V rather than on the EVM.
Ethereum would not modify its inter-contract communication, its abstractions of intelligent contracts or its current account structure. The change would mainly affect the calculation process in the background. Compatibility behind would be maintained, allowing inherited EVM contracts to continue working and interacting with the new RISC-V contracts.
According to Buterin, this modification could increase the efficiency of the prover by more than 50 times, or more in some cases, helping Ethereum to maintain its competitive advantage over faster monolithic blockchains like Solana (soil) and sui (sui).
This proposal coincides with multi -year stockings in the use of the Ethereum network. According to health data, average transaction costs dropped to $ 0.16 in April, the lowest since 2020. The decline is linked to the drop in L1 activity as users move to layer 2 networks for lower cost execution. Previous improvements have largely focused on reducing L2 storage costs, but have also considerably reduced L1 income.
Although the Pectra d’Ethereum upgrade is defined for May 7, Buerin’s call to a fundamental change suggests that minor changes may not be sufficient. To improve long -term scalability and stay with high performance channels, Ethereum may need to rethink the basic characteristics of its intelligent contract system.
