What’s plaguing Ethereum? As per co-founder Vitalik Buterin ETH’s growing complexity has led to “excessive development expenditure,” “security risk,” and an insular research and development culture.
In a detailed proposal on Saturday, he shared a plan to simplify the blockchain’s architecture over the next five years.
Vitalik Buterin Proposes Bitcoin-Like Simplicity for Ethereum
Buterin points to Bitcoin’s simple protocol as a model worth considering. He noted that “even a smart high school student is capable of fully wrapping their head around and understanding the Bitcoin protocol.”
This simplicity, according to Buterin, delivers several key benefits that Ethereum currently lacks.
One of the best things about Bitcoin is how simple it is. This simplicity has lots of benefits. Let’s bring those benefits to Ethereum. pic.twitter.com/YwmVaOCPlP
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 3, 2025
The proposal identifies multiple advantages of protocol simplicity. This includes making the system easier to reason about, increasing participation in research and governance, reducing infrastructure costs, and lowering long-term maintenance. Additionally, it can reduce catastrophic bug risks and reduce the “social attack surface.”
Buterin’s plan includes changes to both the consensus and execution layers. For the consensus layer, he proposes implementing “3-slot finality” to remove concepts like separate slots and epochs. More controversially, Vitalik Buterin suggests replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with either RISC-V or another simpler virtual machine.
He states that this could deliver “radical improvement in efficiency” with potential “100x+ performance improvement in many cases.”
Will the revamp boost the struggling ETH price
The proposed architectural change comes during a period of notable price underperformance for Ethereum.
ETH price lost approximately 40% over the last year, while Bitcoin price gained 63% in the same period. This extreme divergence has led to questions regarding Ethereum’s position in the market and its value proposition over the long term.
Vitalik Buterin’s proposal could address some of the factors that are deterring investors. By simplifying complexity, Ethereum could be made accessible to more developers and users. This could potentially boost its ecosystem.
The proposal also aims to improve scalability and security, which are two of the most significant concerns for institutional adoption.
Bitcoin is straightforward, which serves during times of unpredictable markets. If Ethereum picks up some of these characteristics but does not lose its programmability, then it may perform better during the next market cycle.
Vitalik Buterin anticipates that it may take up to five years for the entire transition to happen, so the short-term impacts on prices could be minimal. But some indications of advancement on the plan could lead to prices increasing in the long term. The proposal comes as an analyst says ETH is mirroring Bitcoin’s rally.
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