Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin is calling for a fundamental overhaul of the network's core architecture, arguing that more than 80% of proving costs stem from two deep-layer components — the state tree and the virtual machine — that must be redesigned if the protocol is to scale through zero-knowledge technology.
What Happened: Core Architecture Overhaul
At the center of Buterin's proposal is EIP-7864, which would replace Ethereum's current hexary Merkle Patricia tree with a simpler binary tree design. The change would produce Merkle proofs roughly four times shorter than the existing structure, cutting verification bandwidth and making lightweight clients far cheaper to run.
"Today I'll focus on two big things: state tree changes, and VM changes," Buterin wrote, calling them "the big bottlenecks that we have to address if we want efficient proving."
The new binary tree would also group storage slots into pages, allowing decentralized applications that load related data to do so more efficiently — potentially saving more than 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 itself as a compatibility layer. In the near term, he proposed a "vectorized math precompile" — what he called a "GPU for the EVM" — to accelerate cryptographic operations.
Not everyone agrees the network needs more deep-layer changes, however. 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.
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Why It Matters: Scaling From Within
The proposal marks a shift in how Ethereum's leadership frames the scaling problem. Rather than focusing on Layer 2 rollups and blob capacity, Buterin is arguing the next phase of scaling must happen deep inside the protocol itself — at the level of how the network stores and processes data. If the state tree and virtual machine can be made prover-friendly, zero-knowledge applications could integrate directly with Ethereum's base layer instead of building parallel systems.
The debate now is whether that kind of foundational rework is worth the complexity it introduces.
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