• Buterin suggested swapping out the present Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contract language.
  • The idea brings attention to Ethereum’s ongoing battle to enhance throughput while staying competitive.

To make the Ethereum network’s execution layer faster and more efficient, Vitalik Buterin , a co-founder of Ethereum, has suggested swapping out the present Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contract language for the RISC-V instruction set architecture.

Buterin listed zero-knowledge EVM proving, reliable data availability sampling, and maintaining competitive block creation as long-term obstacles to growing the Ethereum network in his proposal from April 20.

Staying Competitive

Implementing the RISC-V architecture in smart contracts, according to the Ethereum co-founder, would make zero knowledge functions for the execution layer more efficient. And maintain competitiveness in the block production markets.

As investors begin to lose faith in the original smart contract blockchain, the idea brings attention to Ethereum’s ongoing battle. To enhance throughput while staying competitive with next-generation monolithic blockchains like Sui and Solana .

Based on statistics from Etherscan, the blob fees for Ethereum, which are transaction fees extracted from Ethereum layer-2 scaling networks, hit a new weekly low of 3.18 Ether for the week ending March 30. Blob fees received throughout the time were 3.18 ETH, which, at the current price of Ether, is almost $5,000. Ethereum network costs were around $0.16 per transaction in April 2025, its lowest level since 2020.

As per industry experts, the steep drop in costs is because fewer people are using the Ethereum base layer to make transactions. Instead, they are turning to smart contracts or one of Ethereum’s several layer-2 scaling solutions.

The layer-2 networks of Ethereum have been characterized as both a boon and a bane. Since they have reduced base layer transaction costs significantly while also eating into base layer revenue.

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