Vitalik Buterin Proposes Bitcoin-Like Simplicity for 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 wide-ranging proposal, Vitalik Buterin has suggested simplifying Ethereum’s architecture over the next five years.

This would involve changes to both the consensus and execution layers, aiming to make the blockchain system more easily understood and used.

Buterin’s proposal comes as another analyst says that ETH is now closely mirroring Bitcoin’s price movements.

In a post on Saturday, Buterin shared a plan to simplify the blockchain’s architecture over the next five years.

He suggests that shifting to a “simpler and more easily understood system” would have several advantages.

This would include making the system easier to reason about, increasing participation in research and governance, and reducing infrastructure costs. It would also lower long-term maintenance.

Moreover, this could reduce catastrophic bug risks and reduce the “social attack surface.”

“The best things in Bitcoin are simple. This simplicity has lots of benefits. Let’s bring those benefits to Ethereum,” Buterin said.

Part of Buterin’s plan is to introduce “3-slot finality” to the consensus layer. This would remove concepts like separate slots and epochs.

Buterin’s proposal is to transition to "3-slot finality," rendering concepts like different slots and epochs obsolete. Additionally, he suggests merging the consensus and execution layers, eliminating the need for cross-rollup communication.

Buterin said that this could deliver “radical improvement in efficiency” with potential “100x+ performance improvement in many cases.”

This would involve replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with either RISC-V or another simpler virtual machine.

Buterin said that this could deliver “radical improvement in efficiency” with potential “100x+ performance improvement in many cases.”

He added that this change could be made in the final two to three years of the transition plan.

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.

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.