Replace the EVM with RISC-V

This is to Ethereum's execution what the Beam Chain is to consensus

Apr 25, 2025

Good evening,

On Sunday, April 20, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with a more performant execution environment that utilizes the RISC-V instruction set.

In this post, I will explain the proposal’s impact on Ethereum’s development roadmap and value proposition.

Yours Truly,

Christine D. Kim

P.S. My ACD Call Minutes and Insights on the latest ACD call, ACDE #210, will be published over the weekend. Stay tuned!

The RISC-V Proposal

RISC-V (pronounced “risk-five”) stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computer-5. It was created in 2010 by a group of computer scientists and engineers at the University of California as an open-source, hardware-neutral, and lightweight computer instruction set architecture (ISA). An ISA is a low-level language that computers can use to understand and run programs.

Ethereum compiles high-level languages like Solidity into EVM bytecode, which is a custom ISA designed for managing smart contract code execution, gas accounting, memory, and state. It is notoriously difficult to execute and prove in zero-knowledge (ZK). For the past few years, Buterin and other researchers have been exploring ways to create a ZK-friendly version of the EVM, called ZKEVMs.

(For background about ZK, ZKEVMs, and their benefits for scaling, read this report I wrote for Galaxy.)

In late 2023, Buterin proposed enshrining ZKEVMs natively in the protocol so that Ethereum transactions and blocks could be proven using ZK. Now, Buterin is proposing a different strategy to utilize ZK technology in Ethereum by introducing a new ISA. The RISC-V instruction set is significantly easier and faster for ZKEVMS and general-purpose ZK virtual machines to prove.

Buterin writes in his latest post that RISC-V is already the ISA of choice that ZKEVM provers compile down.

“ZK-EVM provers today already work by proving over implementations of the EVM compiled down to RISC-V.”

Instead of compiling EVM bytecode into RISC-V instructions, Buterin proposes introducing RISC-V as an ISA to Ethereum so that high-level code like Solidity can be compiled directly down to RISC-V. Once compiled to RISC-V, the code can then be run through general-purpose VMs like RISC Zero, Cartesi, and SP1, which are already optimized for executing and proving RISC-V instructions in ZK.

Buterin estimates that proving Solidity code compiled down to RISC-V directly, instead of EVM bytecode, could be over 100x more efficient in proving time and memory usage. It would also not require excessive amounts of custom engineering or large and complex circuits as in the case of ZKEVMs.

Buterin goes on to explain that there are several ways to implement his proposal.

“The least disruptive is to support two VMs, and allow contracts to be written in either one.”

The other approach is to convert existing EVM contracts into RISC-V through “an EVM interpreter contract” that can rewrite EVM bytecode in RISC-V.

That’s the summary of Buterin’s proposal. Now, let’s dig into its implications for Ethereum’s development roadmap and value proposition.

Roadmap Implications

Notice how the entirety of Buterin’s proposal addresses a theoretical problem. In a future where Ethereum relies on ZK proofs for faster and more efficient code execution, integrating RISC-V as an ISA would be more straightforward than relying on ZKEVMs.

The motivation for Buterin’s proposal is to address the theoretical bottlenecks to scaling Ethereum that developers may face after they have exhausted their list of short-term to medium-term improvements to the protocol, which he notes include Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), like EIP 4444 (history expiry), delayed execution, and block-level access lists.

Much like the Beam Chain proposal to overhaul the consensus layer (CL), Buterin’s proposal is a moonshot idea that looks so far ahead into Ethereum’s future, it bears little relevance to the current development roadmap of Ethereum.

Also, like the Beam Chain, the proposal to integrate RISC-V in Ethereum’s core protocol is contentious and lacks consensus among key stakeholders in the Ethereum ecosystem.

In some ways, Buterin’s proposal contradicts developers’ efforts to improve the EVM for long-term use through upgrades like the EVM Object Format (EOF), which has already been approved for inclusion in Fusaka, the next immediate upgrade after Pectra.

It will take years for developers to exhaust their list of short-term improvements to the execution layer (EL), and over these years, research related to scaling public blockchains is likely to change in major ways.

Consider it was not too long ago, less than two years ago, when ZKEVMs were considered the “holy grail” for scaling Ethereum as a general-purpose blockchain, and Buterin was writing about the paths forward for enshrining ZKEVMs in Ethereum.

As exciting as breakthroughs in research and development are, not all breakthroughs result in immediate real-world impact. The proposal to replace the EVM with RISC-V is a breakthrough that makes the research for utilizing ZK technology to scale Ethereum simpler in some ways, but it does not move the needle on the protocol’s readiness to actually adopt ZK. It does not impact the Ethereum development roadmap in any way, at least for now.

Value Implications

It also does not impact Ethereum’s value proposition. The proposal does not change any core functionalities of the protocol that impact what Ethereum is used for or any value accrual mechanisms that impact reasons to hold ETH as an asset.

Buterin’s proposal seeks to help scale Ethereum as a more performant Layer-1 (L1) blockchain by making transaction execution faster and more efficient through the use of ZK technology.

It is a long-term performance improvement that may or may not end up being implemented on Ethereum.

It is an objective that, when coupled with other concrete and near-term objectives like the Fusaka upgrade, which seeks to scale Ethereum as a data availability layer for Layer-2 (L2) rollups, illustrates how Ethereum researchers and developers are exploring ways to scale both the L1 and L2 ecosystems of Ethereum.

It does little beyond this. But a little can go a long way for an asset that has been floundering in negative and bearish sentiment for the better part of 2024 and 2025. At the time of writing, ETH is up over 10% since Buterin’s post was published.

If you’d like to dig deeper into the topics discussed in today’s newsletter, here are some additional resources:

Galaxy Weekly Top Stories, Beam Chain: This is my write-up of the Beam Chain proposal, a radical upgrade to Ethereum’s consensus layer proposed last year at Devcon 2024 by Ethereum Foundation Justin Drake.
Exploring the Boundless Potential of ZK Powered Apps w/RISC Zero’s Steven Li: A podcast interview I did with Steven Li, Head of Strategy at RISC Zero, last September about the potential of ZKVMs and their relevance to Ethereum.
ZKEVMs, The Future of Ethereum Scalability: A Galaxy research report about ZKEVMs and how they work, which I wrote during a time when ZKEVMs were believed to be the “holy grail” for Ethereum scaling.
Haseeb and Gwart arguing while Tarun writes a research paper: This is an interesting conversation between Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, and Gwart about what gives tokens, specifically L1 tokens like ETH, value. The part that resonated with me the most is when Haseeb said, “If ETH doesn’t have any value, nothing else can.”

Thank you for reading today’s edition of ACD After Hours! What did you think of this one? Leave a comment and tell me what you liked (or didn’t). I read every message. :)

Replace the EVM with RISC-V

This is to Ethereum's execution what the Beam Chain is to consensus

The RISC-V Proposal

Roadmap Implications

Value Implications

Discussion about this post