$ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled an ambitious roadmap to radically simplify Ethereum’s base layer, aiming to match the minimalism and stability of Bitcoin within five years.
In a new blog post titled "Simplifying the L1", published on May 3, Buterin proposed sweeping changes to Ethereum’s architecture — covering consensus, execution, and protocol standards. He emphasized that Ethereum’s growing complexity has led to bloated development, increased costs, and higher security risks.
“Ethereum five years from now can become close to as simple as Bitcoin,” Buterin wrote, noting that unnecessary complexity has often hurt the network’s resilience and maintainability.
A major focus of the plan is the introduction of a new “3-slot finality” consensus model, which would eliminate technical overhead like sync committees and validator shuffling. On the execution layer, Buterin proposed migrating from the current Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to a simpler, zero-knowledge-friendly virtual machine like RISC-V — promising a 100x performance boost for ZK proofs.
To streamline the protocol even further, he called for standardizing Ethereum’s data formats, serialization methods, and coding practices across the stack.
“Simplicity is in many ways similar to decentralization,” Buterin argued, suggesting Ethereum adopt limits on line counts for consensus-critical code, similar to what Tinygrad does.
The call for a simpler Ethereum comes amid growing competition from newer L1 blockchains. Industry voices like Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik recently pointed out Ethereum’s waning dominance, suggesting a need for evolution to maintain its leadership.
Buterin’s proposal marks a significant philosophical shift — prioritizing efficiency, security, and maintainability over experimental complexity.
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