Vitalik Buterin has outlined a two-part plan to overhaul Ethereum’s execution layer to scale better and integrate more cleanly with zero-knowledge proofs. He focuses on two big changes: restructuring Ethereum’s state tree and, over time, shifting to a new, proof‑friendly virtual machine.
First Step: Vitalik Suggests Restructuring Ethereum’s State Tree
Vitalik’s first pillar targets what he calls Ethereum’s main bottleneck for proof efficiency: the current hexary Merkle Patricia Tree used for state. He backs EIP‑7864, which would replace it with a binary tree that uses more efficient hash functions.
This change would shorten Merkle branches and reduce the size of inclusion proofs, lowering bandwidth requirements and reducing costs for light clients and zk‑provers. A binary tree also aligns better with standard zk circuits and hardware, making it easier to generate and verify proofs of Ethereum state.
Vitalik notes that this part of the plan is already in progress and has real EIP work behind it, even if client teams still need to agree on details and timelines. It fits into the broader push to make Ethereum blocks easier to prove, so rollups and zk‑based validation can scale without centralizing around a few large provers.
Second Step: Move Toward a New Virtual Machine
The second pillar is more ambitious. Vitalik wants Ethereum to gradually move away from the current EVM toward a new virtual machine, such as RISC‑V, that is much friendlier to proofs. Today, proving EVM execution is slow and complex because the instruction set was never designed with zk systems in mind.
In his plan, Ethereum would first introduce a RISC‑V‑like VM as a precompile or alternative target for some contracts. Over time, more contracts could deploy to this VM, while the existing EVM serves as a compatibility layer that runs on top of it. That path preserves backward compatibility while reducing the amount of “native” EVM logic that zk‑provers must handle.
Vitalik stresses that this VM transition remains speculative and lacks broad community consensus. He presents it as a long‑term direction to unlock 50–100x better proof efficiency for execution, which would directly benefit rollups and any future scheme that verifies blocks with zk‑proofs.
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