The Ethereum team began work on a radical optimization of the blockchain network’s core layer, aiming to simplify both the consensus and execution layers, transition to a new virtual machine, and standardize key protocol components.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s Co-Founder, announced a major simplification of the blockchain’s core architecture. The goal is to strengthen Ethereum’s position as a foundational layer for finance, governance, and identity data storage. The plan includes replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with the simpler and more efficient RISC-V virtual machine, fundamentally changing the block finalization mechanism, and unifying serialization and encoding.
The technical transformation roadmap extends to 2030. By then, the goal is to bring Ethereum’s core layer complexity closer to that of Bitcoin’s protocol.
A key part of the upgrade is the introduction of a new finalization protocol, 3-slot finality, which eliminates legacy elements like epochs, slots, committee shuffling, and sync committees. The base implementation consists of about 200 lines of code and delivers near-optimal security properties. This will allow simplification of the P2P architecture and fork choice rules. Additionally, the use of STARK aggregation makes decentralized and low-cost block collection possible.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine, which accumulated excessive complexity, is planned to be replaced with RISC-V or a similar minimalist VM. This change is expected to boost performance by roughly 100 times and eliminate the need for most precompiles. Furthermore, the new approach will simplify smart contract implementation, reduce overhead, and give developers more flexibility, including the ability to use general-purpose programming languages.
To ensure compatibility during the transition to the new virtual machine, support for EVM contracts will be maintained through an interpreter implemented as a smart contract. This will allow existing applications to continue running unchanged, while offloading EVM complexity from the consensus layer and simplifying the protocol without sacrificing functionality.
The transition to RISC-V will be phased:
- Implementation of new precompiles as on-chain contracts on RISC-V.
- Parallel support for RISC-V and EVM at the protocol level.
- Replacement of existing precompiles with RISC-V contracts.
- Deployment of an EVM interpreter on RISC-V as a smart contract, enabling old EVM contracts to run through this layer.
The plan also includes moving away from heterogeneous approaches to serialization and data structures in Ethereum and replacing them with unified solutions across the architecture:
- Erasure codes — a single code will be used for sampling, P2P, and historical storage.
- Serialization format — a network-wide shift to SSZ, already used at the consensus layer, is proposed.
- Merkle trees — replacing the outdated Merkle Patricia Tree with a binary tree using an optimized hash will improve proof efficiency.
Ethereum devs’ central priorities are minimizing critical logic in the consensus layer, reducing the code volume needed to verify the chain, and creating a clearly defined, formally specified protocol core that is resilient to social and technical attacks.
The proposed changes not only pave the way for L1 scaling but also significantly reduce systemic risks and lower the barriers to development participation. The announced plans are comparable in scale to The Merge, during which Ethereum successfully switched its consensus algorithm from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
