Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a bold and innovative idea to overhaul Ethereum’s core execution engine. In a recent post on the Ethereum Magicians forum, Buterin suggested replacing Ethereum’s existing execution engine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), with RISC-V, an open-source processor architecture.
The Problem with the EVM
Ethereum’s EVM has been central to the network’s ability to execute smart contracts. However, Buterin argues that it has become a significant scaling bottleneck. He believes that in order to solve the scalability issues and improve efficiency, Ethereum needs to reimagine the way it handles execution. This leads to his proposal for integrating RISC-V as a replacement.
What Would Change?
The fundamental smart contract features that developers use today — such as accounts, storage, and cross-contract calls — would remain unchanged. However, the key shift would happen under the hood, where Ethereum’s current opcodes, such as SLOAD and CALL, would transform into system calls (syscalls) in a RISC-V architecture. This change would mean that instead of compiling Solidity or Vyper code into EVM bytecode, they would be compiled directly into RISC-V instructions.
Why RISC-V?
Buterin’s rationale for choosing RISC-V is rooted in its compatibility with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, the cryptographic tools used to scale Ethereum. ZK-provers already simulate the EVM by translating it into RISC-V, and Buterin believes that providing developers with direct access to RISC-V would eliminate unnecessary complexity in the system. This could lead to significant efficiency gains, with some calculations potentially becoming over 100 times more efficient.
Backwards Compatibility
One of the most attractive aspects of this proposal is that it would not break existing smart contracts. All current EVM contracts would continue to work as they do now, and they could still interact with the new RISC-V-based contracts. Furthermore, developers would not have to abandon Solidity; the tooling would simply adapt to the new system under the hood.
Potential Implementation Scenarios
There are a few different ways this transition could be implemented:
Dual Support for EVM and RISC-V Contracts: Ethereum could support both EVM and RISC-V contracts concurrently, allowing for a gradual transition.
RISC-V-Powered Interpreter for EVM Contracts: Older EVM contracts could be run through a RISC-V-powered interpreter, ensuring compatibility while transitioning.
Virtual Machine Interpreters as Core Protocol: Ethereum could eventually make virtual machine interpreters a core part of the protocol, allowing developers to use other VMs like Move in the future.
Buterin also highlighted that projects like Nervos and Polkadot are already experimenting with RISC-V, suggesting that Ethereum could be the next big network to embrace this shift.
Long-Term Vision and Upcoming Upgrades
While Buterin’s proposal is long-term, it signals a future where Ethereum could operate on an entirely new virtual machine, designed for greater efficiency and scalability. However, Ethereum’s immediate focus is on its next major upgrade, Pectra, which is set to launch on May 7. This upgrade will focus on rollup scaling, improving user experience, and setting validator stake limits.
In the future, if Buterin’s vision comes to fruition, Ethereum could become a more efficient and future-proof blockchain, with a new virtual machine powering its execution layer.
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