Ethereum Co-Founder Seeks Radical Overhaul to Tackle Proving Costs Bottlenecks

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is calling for a fundamental overhaul of the network's core architecture. According to him, more than 80% of proving costs stem from two deep-layer components: the state tree and the virtual machine.

To address these bottlenecks, Buterin proposed replacing Ethereum's current hexary Merkle Patricia tree with a simpler binary tree design in EIP-7864. This change would produce Merkle proofs roughly four times shorter than the existing structure, reducing verification bandwidth and making lightweight clients cheaper to run.

The new binary tree 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.

Beyond the state tree, Buterin outlined a longer-term vision to move past the Ethereum Virtual Machine altogether in favor of a RISC-V-based architecture. He described a phased deployment: RISC-V would first power precompiles, then support user-deployed contracts, and eventually absorb the EVM as a compatibility layer.

However, not everyone agrees that the network needs more deep-layer changes. Analyst DBCrypto criticized what he described as growing abstraction across the Ethereum roadmap, arguing that each additional layer increases complexity, introduces trust assumptions, and creates potential attack surfaces.