Ethereum Co-Founder Calls for Core Architecture Overhaul to Boost Scalability

Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin is calling for a fundamental overhaul of the network's core architecture, citing two deep-layer components as major bottlenecks to scaling.

The state tree and virtual machine are responsible for more than 80% of proving costs, Buterin argued. He proposed replacing Ethereum's current hexary Merkle Patricia tree with a simpler binary tree design, which would produce Merkle proofs roughly four times shorter and cut verification bandwidth.

The new design would also group storage slots into pages, allowing decentralized applications to load related data more efficiently and potentially saving over 10,000 gas per transaction in some cases. Buterin also outlined a long-term vision to move past the Ethereum Virtual Machine altogether in favor of a RISC-V-based architecture.

Not everyone agrees with Buterin's proposal, however. Analyst DBCrypto criticized what he described as growing abstraction across the Ethereum roadmap, arguing that each additional layer increases complexity and creates potential attack surfaces.