Vitalik just shared a bold idea to transition from EVM to RISC-V to meet the demand for enhanced performance of the Ethereum network $ETH
1️⃣ Issues that Ethereum is facing:
EVM - the 'engine' running Ethereum's smart contracts consumes a lot of resources, especially during the block execution step. As it was not designed to optimize for ZK technology, EVM is making it difficult for Ethereum to expand Layer 1 to handle more transactions effectively.
2️⃣ RISC-V Solution
- In theory, transitioning to RISC-V requires developers on Ethereum to adapt in order to optimize the use of RISC-V, such as: using the new programming language Rust (instead of the current Solidity/Vyper), rewriting old smart contracts, updating the entire accompanying tool ecosystem,....
- RISC-V can be simply understood as the 'new engine' replacing EVM. RISC-V has an open-source architecture, is ZK technology-friendly, and has been adopted by Nervos & Polkadot.
- RISC-V is estimated to potentially reduce the processing cost of smart contracts by over 100 times in certain cases for Ethereum.
3️⃣ RISC-V Deployment Plan
According to Vitalik's proposal, Ethereum does not discard everything that has been built, but only changes to better align with ZK technology:
- Old-style EVM smart contracts will still operate and are fully compatible in both directions with the new RISC-V.
- Developers can still write code using Solidity/Vyper, the only difference is that the backend will compile to RISC-V instead of EVM bytecode.
- Core concepts of Ethereum such as accounts, storage, ETH balance… remain unchanged.
👉 If implemented correctly, users and programmers will hardly notice any change in their experience.
4️⃣ Roadmap
Ethereum is still focused on the Pectra upgrade (7/5/2025), while RISC-V is a long-term plan and this is just a proposal.
=> Vitalik asserts that if Ethereum wants to become a global financial infrastructure, restructuring this execution layer is inevitable.