Vitalik Buterin Proposes Shifting Ethereum’s Architecture to RISC-V

Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, shared his thoughts on transitioning the Ethereum Virtual Machine to the open RISC-V architecture.

According to him, this proposal is as ambitious as Beam Chain and might be the only way to significantly enhance the network’s execution layer efficiency.

RISC-V is a processor and software architecture, an alternative to ARM and x86. Buterin suggests that the transition addresses several L1 Ethereum scaling issues, particularly maintaining competition in block mining and the limited capabilities of ZK-EVM.

Existing smart contracts will remain compatible, and developers can continue using Solidity or Vyper.

In response to Buterin’s proposal, Cinneamhain Ventures partner Adam Cochran agreed on the potential benefits for the main network but expressed uncertainty about the prioritization given the transition costs. He also noted a lack of advantages for L2.

Previously, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams urged Ethereum developers to stay the course of recent years and prioritize second-layer networks as a key scaling element.