Vitalik Buterin proposes replacing Ethereum’s EVM with RISC-V, aiming for major performance boosts and better zero-knowledge proof efficiency.
Ethereum’s base layer revenue is plummeting, with blob fees and transaction costs at multi-year lows as users shift to Layer 2s.
Investor confidence is shaky, and if trends continue, analysts warn ETH could drop to around $1,100 amid revenue and scalability concerns.
Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterinjust dropped a wild but intriguing suggestion: scrap the currentEVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) language and swap it out with RISC-V, a low-level, open instruction set architecture. The goal? Make Ethereum’s execution layer way faster—and maybe finally catch up to the high-throughput chains that’ve been eating its lunch.
In a post shared on April 20, Buterin didn’t hold back. He laid out a few of Ethereum’s biggest bottlenecks—data availability sampling, zero-knowledge proofs, and the need to keep block production competitive—and proposed that going full RISC-V could be a radical but necessary leap forward.
“The beam chain effort holds great promise for simplifying Ethereum’s consensus layer,” he wrote. “But for the execution layer? Yeah… this kind of radical change might be our only real shot.”
NEW: Ethereum $ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a MASSIVE network upgrade that could send Etherum to over $10,000 🤯
Transitioning the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to "RISC-V," modernizing the network’s execution layer
Ethereum’s Competitive Struggles—And What’s at Stake
This isn’t just some technical nerd-fight over programming languages. Ethereum’s been feeling the pressure lately. While chains like Solanaand Sui are boasting insane throughput and slick UX, Ethereum’s still bogged down by its older architecture. Even with Layer 2s helping out, the base layer feels sluggish—and expensive.
Vitalik claims that switching to RISC-V could boost efficiency by 100x. Not a typo. One-hundred times faster. That kind of gain could open the door for much more powerful zero-knowledge proofs, cheaper transactions, and better scaling across the board.
But, yeah—it would also be a huge architectural shift. And with any shift that big, comes risk.
Fees Are Down, But So Is Confidence
All of this comes as Ethereum’s base layer is losing traction. Blob fees (aka the fees collected from Layer 2s) dropped to just 3.18 ETH in late March—that’s barely $5K for the week. To put it in context, Ethereum network fees haven’t been this low since 2020. That’s not a stat you wanna brag about.
Transaction costs are also down—about $0.16 per transfer—because fewer users are even using the main chain. Instead, they’re hanging out on Layer 2s or using smart contracts that bypass traditional transaction flows entirely.
It’s efficient, sure, but it’s also cannibalizing Ethereum’s base layer revenue, which is a pretty big deal if you’re holding ETH and hoping the ecosystem continues to grow sustainably.
And now? Investor confidence is slipping. ETH has already taken a serious hit—and if things keep trending the way they are, some analysts warn we could be heading for a retest around $1,100. Ouch.
