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Vitalik Buterin floats swapping Ethereum's EVM for RISC-V to boost scalability

Buterin says swapping EVM bytecode for RISC-V could cut execution costs, while old contracts would remain interoperable with new ones

By Zack Abrams

Ecosystems•April 20, 2025, 12:53PM EDT

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Vitalik Buterin floats swapping Ethereum's EVM for RISC-V to boost scalability

Quick Take

In a new forum post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposes boosting Ethereum’s scalability by using RISC-V as the virtual machine language of smart contracts, rather than the current EVM bytecode.
Buterin said the “radical” and “ambitious” idea could be the “only viable path” for significantly scaling Ethereum’s execution layer.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in a new blog post on the Ethereum Magicians forum, floated a "radical" long-term proposal for the blockchain network's execution layer: replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine's (EVM) bytecode with the open-source RISC-V architecture.

"The beam chain effort holds great promise for greatly simplifying the consensus layer of Ethereum," Buterin wrote. "But for the execution layer to see similar gains, this kind of radical change may be the only viable path."