The Proposed Overhaul: Vitalik Buterin's Plan to Transform Ethereum
Enhance Ethereum's Speed by a Factor of 100, Simplify it to Equal the Ease of Bitcoin, According to Vitalik.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, has floated the idea of chucking out Ethereum's Virtual Machine (EVM) and opting for RISC-V. The motivation - to whip Ethereum into shape, making it faster, simpler, and more efficient.
In his May 3 blog post, Buterin envisions Ethereum transforming into a lean, mean machine approaching the level of simplicity found in Bitcoin within the next five years.
"Bitcoin's beauty lies in its simplicity," Buterin wrote, waxing lyrical about how simple transactions and proofs work on the Bitcoin network. This simplicity is crucial, he believes, in establishing Bitcoin's standing as a trusted, globally used base layer.
RISC-V vs EVM
Buterin's proposition involves swapping Ethereum's custom EVM for the open-source RISC-V instruction set, determining how software communicates with processors. This switch promises a juicy 100x performance boost by removing extra intermediary steps, making operations directly on the execution layer possible. The result could be operations up to 100 times faster, keeping existing smart contracts humming along.
By contrast, the EVM requires translation to various formats before getting down to business, which slows things down. RISC-V can handle operations directly and is a cinch to grasp, increasing the chances that more folks will be able to hack away at Ethereum's codebase.
If Ethereum embraces RISC-V, it could also slash "the burden of creating new infrastructure," minimize "future protocol maintenance costs," the "risk of monstrous bugs," and shrink the "attack surface" with fewer moving parts, Buterin predicts.
The Bumpy Road Ahead
Despite these lofty ambitions, Buterin owns up to his share of mistakes, chief among them a failure to streamline Ethereum when he could have. "Sometimes this failure occurred because of my own choices," Buterin admitted.
In an analysis for Decrypt, Dominick John, an analyst at Kronos Research, flagged potential obstacles in Buterin's plan. The proposal "could break backward compatibility, necessitating large-scale developer retraining, and rely on immature tooling," John warned.
Moreover, Ethereum's governance has a reputation for being convoluted and requires "smooth coordination across numerous fragmented stakeholders," a herculean task indeed.
Yet, there's no denying Ethereum's impact, extending far beyond its ever-varying market value. As Thad Pinakiewicz, researcher at Galaxy, eloquently put it in his recent newsletter, "Ethereum isn't a failure because its price is struggling. It's evolving and laying the foundations for technology others are emulating."
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
Daily Debrief Newsletter
- Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's co-founder, plans to swap Ethereum's custom EVM for RISC-V, promising a potential 100x performance boost and simpler operations, similar to Bitcoin.
- Buterin's proposal could slash the burden of creating new infrastructure, minimize future protocol maintenance costs, the risk of monstrous bugs, and shrink the attack surface with fewer moving parts.
- Despite these ambitious plans, Buterin acknowledges past mistakes, such as failing to streamline Ethereum earlier, and analysts like Dominick John have warned about potential obstacles like backward compatibility issues, extensive developer retraining, and immature tooling.
- Ethereum's governance, known for its complexity, requires smooth coordination across numerous fragmented stakeholders, making the implementation of such changes a challenging task.
- While Ethereum's ever-varying market value receives widespread attention, its impact extends far beyond that, as it lays foundations for technology others are emulating in the realms of blockchain, smart contracts, DeFi, crypto, and more.
