Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Calls for Protocol Simplification

In a significant update to the protocol’s long-term roadmap, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called for the simplification of ETH’s base protocol

In a significant update to the protocol’s long-term roadmap, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called for the simplification of ETH’s base protocol to make the network more efficient and resilient.

How Can Ethereum Achieve Protocol Simplicity?

In a May 3rd blog post titled "Simplifying the L1," Buterin shared his perspective on the need to simplify the Ethereum network, stating that simplicity is an important—but easy to undervalue—aspect of scalability and resilience.

The crypto founder went on to applaud how beautifully simple the Bitcoin blockchain is.

Buterin said:

"Even a smart high school student is capable of fully wrapping their head around and understanding the Bitcoin protocol. A programmer is capable of writing a client as a hobby project."

According to Buterin, protocol simplicity offers a variety of benefits that are crucial to ensuring that blockchain networks, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, remain credibly neutral and globally trusted base layer. Meanwhile, it also reduces infrastructure costs, long-term maintenance expenses, and risks of bugs and malicious attacks.

In the blog post, Buterin also described how the Ethereum network can become close to as simple as Bitcoin in five years. According to the co-founder, one of the three ways of achieving this simplicity is through a more optimal consensus layer, with most notably a 3-slot finality redesign.

Furthermore, Buterin mentioned the simplification of the execution layer, complaining about how the complexity of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) has unnecessarily increased. To fix this, the crypto co-founder proposed replacing the EVM with a new minimal virtual machine (like RISC-V).

The co-founder noted:

"The biggest challenge with meaningfully simplifying (or even improving without complexifying) any part of the EVM is how to balance accomplishing the desired goals with preserving backwards compatibility for existing applications."

Finally, Buterin outlined that the third and "most easily underrated" way of enhancing protocol simplicity is to share one standard across different parts of the protocol. "There is typically very little or no benefit to using different protocols to do the same thing in different places," the Ethereum co-founder said.

Buterin concluded that simplicity is extremely similar to decentralization, which are both requisite in achieving resilience in blockchains.

Ethereum Price Overview

While Buterin will be looking to make adjustments to the Ethereum network, ETH investors will hope that these enhancements will translate to the value of the Ether token. ETH's performance has been quite underwhelming so far in 2025, registering four red months to start the year.

As of this writing, the price of Ether stands around $1,817, reflecting a 1.6% decline in the past 24 hours. It is worth mentioning that the Ethereum price has enjoyed some bullish momentum in the past two weeks, with its value increasing by nearly 15% in that period.