According to Cointelegraph, one of the founders of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has proposed replacing the current Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contract language with RISC-V instruction set architecture. This change aims to enhance the speed and efficiency of Ethereum's execution layer. Buterin's proposal, dated April 20, addresses several long-term challenges in scaling the Ethereum network, such as stable data availability sampling, maintaining competitive block production, and EVM proof without knowledge.
Buterin argues that adopting the RISC-V architecture in smart contracts could keep the block production market competitive and improve the efficiency of zero-knowledge functions in the execution layer. He emphasizes that while beam chain efforts show promise in streamlining Ethereum's consensus layer, such radical changes may be necessary for the execution layer to achieve similar improvements. This proposal underscores Ethereum's ongoing struggle to improve throughput and remain competitive with newer monolithic blockchains like Solana and Sui, especially as investor confidence in the original smart contract blockchain wanes.
Buterin suggests that the implementation of this proposal could yield efficiency improvements of up to 100 times. Meanwhile, transaction costs on the Ethereum network have seen a significant decline. During the week of March 30, Ethereum blob fees, which are the transaction fees from Ethereum's layer-2 scaling network, dropped to a weekly low of 3.18 Ether (ETH), equivalent to about $5,000 based on the current price of Ether. In April 2025, Ethereum's network fees reached their lowest level since 2020, averaging around $0.16 per transaction.
Brian Quinlivan, marketing director of Santiment, links the drastic reduction in costs to the decline in the number of users sending transactions on the base layer of Ethereum. Instead, users are opting for smart contracts or one of the many layer-2 scaling solutions of Ethereum. The decline in transaction costs on the Ethereum network per week is quite striking in the first quarter of 2025. While layer-2 networks have significantly reduced transaction costs on the base layer, they have also impacted the revenue of the base layer of Ethereum. This has raised concerns about revenue generation and the potential negative effects of layer-2 scaling solutions on Ethereum's market share. As a result, the price of Ether has reached historic lows and could fall further to around $1,100 if investor confidence continues to decline.#BinanceAlphaAlert