Introduction: Vitalik recently published an article titled "Simplifying Ethereum L1", advocating for the introduction of RISC-V, promoting STARK technology, and mechanisms like 3-slot finality to reduce protocol complexity, aiming to simplify Ethereum to a level close to Bitcoin within five years. (Background: The Ethereum Foundation refused to disclose "Vitalik's voting weight", raising community concerns over governance transparency: fundamentally centralized) (Additional Context: Vitalik discusses AI: The "tree-ring model" reveals the reversal of the AI competition landscape between China and the US) Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin today wrote about "Simplifying L1", stating that if Ethereum is to become "the world ledger of civil assets and records", it needs scalability and resilience. He highlighted an often-underestimated factor in achieving resilience: "the simplicity of the protocol", which allows more developers to participate in core development, reduces error risks, and lowers maintenance costs, thus strengthening the overall decentralized foundation. He used Bitcoin as an example to illustrate the many benefits of its simple protocol, and reflected on how Ethereum's past over-design and numerous features led to maintenance difficulties, high entry barriers, and increased error likelihood, hoping to simplify Ethereum's core protocol to a level close to Bitcoin within the next five years. Simplifying the consensus layer: Embracing 3-slot finality and STARK technology First, Vitalik aims to significantly simplify Ethereum's "consensus system" by adopting a new method called "3-slot finality" to determine blocks, removing many complex settings, and even implementing it with just 200 lines of code, while also improving security. Furthermore, he promotes the use of STARK technology to compress verification information, allowing all nodes to participate without relying on a few individuals, thereby avoiding centralization. Finally, he also suggests redesigning the validators' entry and exit mechanisms to make the overall consensus protocol lighter and easier to verify. Note: A slot in Ethereum's consensus layer (Beacon Chain) is a "time unit", with each slot being 12 seconds. Simplifying the execution layer: Switching from EVM to RISC-V Next, in the execution layer, Vitalik expressed dissatisfaction with the EVM, believing its excessive optimization for specific cryptographic applications has become an unnecessary burden. He reiterated a previously proposed radical solution: replacing EVM with the open-source instruction set RISC-V or a similarly simple VM, listing multiple advantages: 100-fold efficiency improvement in a ZK environment, simple instruction set architecture, easier for developers to get started, increased contract size limits, and support for multi-language development (not just Solidity). He also admitted that this transition would take time, and in the short term, he still recommends implementing some lightweight upgrades to EVM (such as increasing contract size limits). Additional reading: Will Ethereum's "switch to RISC-V" scare away developers? OG warns: ETH ecosystem will be redistributed, small projects will flee to Solana. "Color-coded partitioning" strategy In practical implementation, Vitalik further proposed a "color-coded partitioning" strategy, which ensures that compatibility and user experience are not sacrificed during the transition process. This strategy divides the functions in the Ethereum protocol into three categories based on importance and risk levels, thus ensuring existing applications continue to operate while making the protocol itself simpler and more maintainable. 1) Green Zone: Critical consensus area, must be extremely simple. This part of the code directly affects "which block is considered valid". All nodes must execute this code without any errors. Therefore, the goal here is simplicity, verifiability, and low error risk. 2) Orange Zone: Historically compatible area, can be left for specific implementations to handle. These exist to preserve past historical transactions, contracts, and old version functionalities. While new nodes may not need these functions, old contracts still rely on them for execution of historical data. 3) Yellow Zone: Tool-assisted area, not part of blockchain consensus, but helps users understand and makes it easier for developers to operate. For example: When Etherscan displays account information, it interprets the operational details of ERC-4337, but this information does not affect the chain's consensus itself. Some block builders or wallets may optimize based on this data. Ultimately, Vitalik hopes to remove the current complex EVM from Ethereum's consensus core and replace it with a smart contract interpreter written in RISC-V, deployed on-chain as a general contract operation. In doing so, Ethereum's core only needs to understand the RISC-V virtual machine, significantly simplifying the protocol logic; while applications that need to execute old contracts can parse past EVM instructions through this interpreter. This design allows Ethereum to simplify its main system while still retaining compatibility. Setting a clear "maximum lines of code" goal In addition, Vitalik also suggests that Ethereum should use the same set of standard tools and formats across different technical layers in future designs, making it easier for developers to get started and improving overall network performance and security. At the same time, he calls for Ethereum to set a maximum protocol code line number target, like the lightweight deep learning framework tinygrad, and to shift the design culture from "functionalism" to "minimalism". Only through simple design can Ethereum truly become a globally trusted, decentralized, and maintainable infrastructure. Related reports: ADA founder slams Ethereum's "three major flaws": Vitalik admits Cardano is better, ETH may disappear in ten years. Technology) What is RISC-V that Vitalik advocates? Why does CKB-VM choose RISC-V? Analyzing Vitalik's strategic ambition to "replace EVM with RISC-V" to reconstruct Ethereum's execution layer. "Vitalik: Ethereum is overly complex, L1 should be simplified to "close to Bitcoin" level within five years". This article was first published in BlockTempo (the most influential blockchain news media).

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