Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposes a significant upgrade to the network’s execution layer, aiming to enhance scalability and address Ethereum’s long-standing bottleneck. His plan involves replacing the existing EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) with RISC-V, leveraging its power for improved performance and efficiency. 20 April article in Ethereum Magicians forum details the multi-phase strategy for this change. The proposal emphasizes maintaining compatibility with existing contracts while exploring new avenues for faster execution. Solidity and Vyper will be retained as dominant smart contract languages, compiled directly to RISC-V instructions. While Rust is technically feasible, Buterin believes Solidity offers better developer experience. Notably, backward compatibility is a priority; EVM contracts will continue functioning seamlessly with the RISC-V-based versions, ensuring a smooth transition for all network participants. Buterin highlights execution as Ethereum’s last major scalability bottleneck. This upgrade would be critical in addressing ZK-EVM proving costs, which currently consume nearly 50% of prover cycles in rollups like zkEVMs. The proposal argues that direct RISC-V exposure will streamline this process and potentially enhance performance by up to 100x. Buterin emphasizes the long-term vision behind this proposal as a significant step towards a more scalable and future-proof Ethereum ecosystem.