Vitalik Buterin is shifting the Ethereum scaling dialog away from Layer 2 (L2) and again to the protocol’s core.
The Russo-Canadian innovator argues that Ethereum’s largest long-term constraints should not rollups or blob capability, however deeper architectural bottlenecks contained in the community’s state tree and digital machine.
Vitalik Buterin Proposes Deep Ethereum Overhaul Concentrating on State Tree and Digital Machine Bottlenecks
Based on Buterin, two parts — the community’s state tree and digital machine — account for greater than 80% of the proving prices. This, he says, is a vital difficulty as zero-knowledge (ZK) know-how turns into central to Ethereum’s roadmap.
“Today I’ll focus on two big things: state tree changes, and VM changes,” Buterin wrote, including that each are “the big bottlenecks that we have to address if we want efficient proving.”
A Binary Tree Overhaul
On the coronary heart of the proposal is EIP-7864, which might exchange Ethereum’s present hexary Merkle Patricia tree with a binary tree design.
The change could sound delicate, however its implications are vital. Binary timber would produce Merkle proofs roughly 4 instances shorter than the present construction, dramatically decreasing verification bandwidth necessities.
That makes light-weight purchasers and privacy-preserving purposes cheaper and extra viable.
The brand new construction would additionally group storage slots into “pages,” permitting purposes that load associated knowledge to take action extra effectively.
Many decentralized purposes (dApps) repeatedly entry adjoining storage slots. This implies the improve may save greater than 10,000 fuel per transaction in some instances.
Buterin additionally prompt pairing the tree change with extra environment friendly hash capabilities, probably delivering additional positive aspects in proof era pace.
Extra importantly, the redesign would make Ethereum’s base layer extra “prover-friendly,” permitting ZK purposes to combine straight with Ethereum’s state as a substitute of constructing parallel techniques.
Zooming out, the binary tree proposal goals to consolidate a decade of classes on state administration right into a cleaner, future-proof construction.
A Future Past the EVM?
Much more bold is Buterin’s long-term imaginative and prescient for Ethereum’s execution engine. He floated the concept of finally shifting past the Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) towards a RISC-V–based mostly structure.
RISC-V is a extensively used open instruction set that would supply better effectivity and ease.
Buterin argued that Ethereum’s growing reliance on special-case precompiles displays a deeper discomfort with the EVM itself.
If Ethereum’s core promise is general-purpose programmability, he prompt, then the VM ought to absolutely assist that imaginative and prescient with out extreme workarounds. A RISC-V-based VM may:
- Cut back complexity
- Enhance uncooked execution effectivity, and
- Higher align with fashionable zero-knowledge proving techniques, a lot of which already use RISC-V environments internally.
Within the close to time period, Buterin proposed a “vectorized math precompile,” described as a “GPU for the EVM.” This might considerably speed up cryptographic operations.
Long term, he outlined a phased transition through which RISC-V would first energy precompiles, then assist user-deployed contracts, and finally take in the EVM itself as a compatibility layer.
Debate Over Complexity
Nevertheless, not everyone seems to be satisfied Ethereum wants extra deep-layer adjustments. Analyst DBCrypto criticized what he described as rising abstraction throughout the Ethereum roadmap, together with new frameworks geared toward addressing rollup fragmentation.
Every further layer, he argued, will increase complexity, introduces belief assumptions, and creates further potential assault surfaces.
Ethereum simply proposed a brand new layer to repair the mess created by all of the poor decisions the previous few years
The “Open Intents Framework” is the Ethereum Basis’s reply to L2 fragmentation
A common commonplace for calculating paths between rollups so customers can really transfer…
— DBCrypto (@DBCrypt0) March 1, 2026
The stress displays a broader debate over whether or not Ethereum ought to proceed layering options on high of its present design or rework its basis.
Nevertheless, based on Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s structure should evolve and adapt as zero-knowledge proofs transfer from a distinct segment to a necessity.
The subsequent section of scaling, he suggests, could not happen on Layer 2 however fairly deep inside Ethereum’s core.
