Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a significant overhaul of the Ethereum base layer, aiming to simplify the protocol’s structure for improved safety, scalability, and long-term sustainability.
Drawing on Bitcoin’s minimalist design rules, Buterin revealed a weblog publish titled “Simplifying the L1” on Could 3, outlining a path to cut back the community’s technical complexity.
Buterin’s imaginative and prescient targets Ethereum’s core layers—consensus, execution, and shared parts—with a method to streamline processes which have grown more and more convoluted for the reason that community’s inception.
Ethereum’s Complexity Is Slowing Progress and Elevating Dangers
Buterin argued that pointless complexity has led to bloated growth timelines, larger upkeep prices, and elevated dangers of bugs.
A central factor of Buterin’s proposal is a reimagining of the consensus layer via a mannequin known as “3-slot finality.”
This strategy would remove intricate mechanisms akin to epochs, sync committees, and validator shuffling.
By decreasing the variety of lively validators at any given time, the protocol might undertake an easier and safer fork selection rule, easing the event of sunshine shoppers and decreasing assault surfaces.
The hassle to revamp Ethereum's consensus, traditionally known as the beam chain, contains many alternatives to simplify consensus, whereas additionally growing effectivity and safety. pic.twitter.com/MIRpsbe48h
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) Could 3, 2025
On the execution facet, Buterin proposed transitioning from the present Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) to a brand new, zero-knowledge (ZK)-friendly digital machine primarily based on the RISC-V structure.
RISC-V is a light-weight, open-source instruction set structure recognized for its effectivity and ease.
The transfer might speed up ZK proof era by as much as 100x and make the protocol extra auditable and developer-friendly.
Buterin urged sustaining backward compatibility in the course of the transition by working legacy EVM contracts via a RISC-V interpreter.
Buterin additionally known as for protocol-wide standardization to attenuate fragmentation.
He advisable consolidating instruments and codecs—akin to adopting a single erasure coding technique, serialization format (SSZ), and tree construction—to cut back redundant programs and improve developer tooling.
“Simplicity is in some ways just like decentralization,” Buterin famous, proposing that Ethereum undertake a “max line-of-code” precept for consensus-critical logic, very similar to the light-weight machine studying mission Tinygrad.
Underneath this strategy, non-critical or legacy options would nonetheless be supported however moved exterior the core specification.
Ethereum Has ‘Enormous Alternative’ to Repair AI’s Centralization Drawback
Ethereum might play a key position in fixing a few of the most urgent issues going through synthetic intelligence, in line with Eric Connor, a former core developer of the blockchain.
Earlier this month, Connor stated Ethereum’s “largest mainstream second” might come via its integration with AI, because the sector struggles with centralization, opaque algorithms, and rising privateness considerations.
“AI is tormented by black-box fashions, centralized information silos, and privateness pitfalls,” Connor famous, including that Ethereum is uniquely positioned to handle these points.
Final month, crypto enterprise capitalist Nic Carter of Citadel Island Ventures pointed to 2 key points undermining Ether’s worth: the rise of layer-2 (L2) scaling networks and unchecked token issuance.
He argued that “grasping Eth L2s” are siphoning off worth from Ethereum’s base layer whereas giving little again.
He additionally criticized the Ethereum group’s acceptance of extreme token creation, claiming that “ETH was buried in an avalanche of its personal tokens. Died by its personal hand.”
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