Vitalik’s Wild Plan to Swap Ethereum’s Brain for a Faster RISC-V One 🤯

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Ah, dear friends, gather ’round! Master Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and wizard supreme of Ethereum, hath declared a bold jest upon the realm of digital contracts. He doth propose to cast away the venerable but clunky Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and replace it with the sprightly RISC-V, an architecture open to all and sundry! 🎩✨

On the hallowed scrolls of the Ethereum Magicians forum, dated April the 20th (no pranks, we hope!), our visionary extolled how this switch might transform the very soul of Ethereum’s execution layer—lifting it from the mire of complexity and throttled speed. The EVM, a faithful servant, renders smart contracts across the network, yet it limps beneath the weight of its own limitations.

“Why suffer the bottleneck, when a quicker steed awaits?” quoth Vitalik. RISC-V, that hardware-layer standard touted in cunning zero-knowledge EVM contraptions, promises blazing speed and legerdemain in proving efficiency—especially for those mysterious zero-knowledge scaling wonders. 🧙‍♂️🔮

Presently, these ZK-EVMs do translate Ethereum’s commands into RISC-V before summoning proofs. But our sage proposes a magical leap: let developers conjure contracts that directly compile to RISC-V, skipping the middleman’s tedious toil. Solidity and Vyper, trusty programming familiars, shall not vanish but will shift their devotion from EVM to RISC-V’s embrace.

Fear not the chaos of upheaval! The grand design promises no upheaval to contract chatter or the noble structure of accounts. Nay, the witchcraft affects but the hidden wheels and cogs behind the scenes. Best of all, the aged EVM contracts shall continue their dance alongside the new RISC-V brethren—backward compatibility for all!

But here’s the clincher: this enchanting alteration might amplify the efficiency of provers over fiftyfold! 🤯 Such sorcery could keep Ethereum galloping ahead of sprightly competitors like Solana and Sui, lest it be left in the blockchain dust.

Yet, ’tis a curious time, for Ethereum’s kingdom feels the chill of fewer transactions and mining pennies, as denizens flock to the cheaper Layer-2 pastures. Average fees have plummeted to a humble $0.16—a number as rare as hen’s teeth in recent years.

Though the Pectra upgrade approaches on May 7th, a mere patchwork may not suffice. To truly rule the high-performance lands, Ethereum must reforge its core incantations and emerge anew—lest it become a quaint relic for scholars to ponder by candlelight. 🕯️📜

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2025-04-21 07:00