Vitalik Buterin suggests RISC-V architecture for Ethereum contracts

• Vitalik proposes RISC-V for Ethereum smart contracts
• Fee reduction impacts Ethereum base layer revenue
• Layer 2 boosts usage but threatens Ether price

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, presented a technical proposal to replace the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contract language with the RISC-V architecture. The idea aims to increase the speed and efficiency of the execution layer, an increasingly debated point in the face of competition from blockchains such as Solana and Sui.

In the proposal published on April 20, Buterin highlighted three challenges facing Ethereum in the long term: stability in data availability sampling, competitiveness in block production, and improvement in zero-knowledge proofs. The implementation of RISC-V, according to him, could be a viable solution to meet these demands.

“The Beam chain effort holds great promise for significantly simplifying Ethereum’s consensus layer, but for the execution layer to see similar gains, this type of radical change may be the only viable path forward,” Buterin said.

The discussion comes at a delicate time for the network, which is struggling to scale efficiently. With the growth of second-layer solutions (layer 2), the main network has seen significant drops in revenue generation, directly affecting the price of Ether (ETH).