Buterin's 2030 goal for Ethereum: simplicity like Bitcoin

Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders and leading developers of Ethereum, outlined in a new article his proposals to simplify the structure of Ethereum to be as straightforward as Bitcoin within a span of 5 years. Buterin suggests making radical simplifications in both the consensus and application (execution) layers of the protocol to achieve this goal in the long term.

Simpler Consensus with 3-Slot Finality

Buterin states that the consensus layer, currently known as the "beacon chain", needs to transition to a new design called "3-slot finality". According to the founder of Ethereum, this approach could simplify the protocol significantly by eliminating concepts such as slots, epochs, and committee shuffling. Additionally, Buterin mentions that the use of STARK-based cryptographic proofs will make the multi-signature (aggregation) process both cheaper and more reliable.

A new VM based on RISC-V instead of EVM

Buterin points out that the execution layer in Ethereum, (EVM), is unnecessarily complex. He emphasizes that the 256-bit virtual machine architecture has overly focused on certain cryptographic operations that were once important, most of which are no longer used today.

To fix this, it suggests a radical transformation instead of "medium-sized" changes: completely abandoning the EVM and switching to a simple architecture like RISC-V. It states that this way, a performance increase of up to 100 times for smart contracts can be achieved, and the code structure will become much simpler.

Backward compatibility: "Onchain Interpreter"

Buterin argues that instead of "leaving behind" existing EVM contracts, backward compatibility can be maintained by running an EVM interpreter ( on-chain. This way, old smart contracts will continue to function, but Ethereum's main protocol will operate directly over a minimal VM like RISC-V.

Standardization: Less code, less issues

Buterin suggests using shared standards to simplify the protocol at both the execution and consensus layers. For example:

• Reducing code overhead in both data publishing and data availability sampling, as well as in distributed ledger storage, using a single error correction code )erasure code(.
• Ensuring consistency in consensus, execution, and smart contract interactions by defining a single serialization format )SSZ(,
• Using a single tree structure like )binary Merkle trees( to accelerate both data verification and the generation of ZK proofs,

believes that the complexity of Ethereum's protocol can be significantly reduced with steps like these.

"Ethereum can be as simple as Bitcoin"

Buterin evaluates the importance of simplification in terms of both security and accessibility. According to him, the beauty of the Bitcoin protocol lies in its simplicity, which is understandable even by a single high school student. He suggests that Ethereum could also reach a similar level of simplicity in the long term.

Published: May 4, 2025 15:36Last Updated: May 4, 2025 15:37