Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a substantial overhaul to Ethereum’s core execution architecture by replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V, an open-source instruction set. Buterin contends that migrating Ethereum’s smart contract execution to RISC-V could significantly enhance scalability, performance, and simplifying Ethereum’s current computational framework.
In an extensive post shared on the Ethereum Magicians forum, Buterin identified the EVM’s limitations as a persistent barrier to long-term scaling. Currently, zero-knowledge (ZK)-based Ethereum Virtual Machines (ZK-EVMs) already convert the Ethereum codebase into the RISC-V instruction set to produce cryptographic proofs. Buterin’s proposal argues in favor of skipping this intermediate translation step altogether by having developers directly write smart contracts that compile to the RISC-V architecture. Such direct compilation, he states, could result in dramatic efficiency gains, particularly for applications built around zero-knowledge proofs.
Ethereum’s existing programming languages like Solidity and Vyper would remain operational, but their compilers would focus on generating RISC-V compatible bytecode rather than EVM-specific code. According to Buterin, Ethereum’s fundamentals including inter-contract communications, contract abstractions and account structure would remain intact. Importantly, the transition would aim at providing full backward compatibility to ensure legacy smart contracts originally developed around EVM functionalities could continue interacting seamlessly with new RISC-V native contracts.
Buterin’s assessment suggests that this shift could greatly improve prover efficiency—potentially increasing performance more than 50-fold—thereby boosting Ethereum’s competitive position compared to faster, monolithic blockchains like Solana and Sui.
The proposal arrives amid declining Ethereum Layer-1 network usage, exemplified by transaction fees dropping to $0.16 per transaction in April 2025—the lowest since 2020. This decrease in Layer-1 activity aligns with a migration of user activity toward less expensive Layer-2 solutions. While prior Ethereum updates have successfully lowered storage costs for Layer-2 scaling solutions, they’ve equally impacted Layer-1 fee revenue negatively. With Ethereum’s next major network update, Pectra, scheduled for May 7, Buterin’s stark suggestion underscores his view that incremental optimizations alone might not suffice in maintaining Ethereum’s competitive advantage.
If adopted, Buterin’s RISC-V integration proposal could represent one of the foundational architectural changes in Ethereum’s history, potentially redefining the technical landscape of Ethereum-based smart contracts and greatly expanding the network’s long-term scalability.
