ALL ABOUT THE PROPOSAL TO REPLACE EVM WITH RISC-V BY $ETH
The article on Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians (04/20/2025) proposes replacing EVM with RISC-V to improve performance and simplify Ethereum's L1 execution layer, addressing scalability bottlenecks.
*Reason: RISC-V is an open-source, modern instruction set with wide applications (e.g., Cartesi Machine running Linux, Doom), helping to accelerate and synchronize L1-L2.
*Benefits: Increase performance in smart contract execution, simplify architecture, better support for L2 and zero-knowledge proofs.
*Challenges: Community discussion is needed on the RISC-V version (such as rv64gc) and how to ensure compatibility between L1-L2.
1. Impact on L1 based on EVM:
- Positive: Increased performance, customization ability, better competition.
- Negative: Difficult transition, loss of backward compatibility, community risks.
2. Impact on L2 on Ethereum:
- Positive: Improved L1 performance, synchronization of L1-L2, better support for ZK.
- Negative: Need to rewrite contracts, increased deployment complexity, cost impact.
3. Impact on other layers:
- Execution layer: Increased speed, more efficient for ZK, but requires new tools.
- Data layer: Increased pressure on data processing, impact on blob costs.
- Consensus layer: Adjustments needed to process transactions faster.
4. Ethereum ecosystem:
- Developers: New learning opportunities, innovation prospects.
- dApps: Complex transition, but improved performance.
- Users: Better experience, but risks of short-term disruption.
- With the market: Increased long-term trust, but short-term risks of ETH price drop.
