Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Barterin shared a new proposal this weekend that would radically review the system that drives its smart contracts.

Barterin’s proposal, which he sent on Ethereum’s primary developer forum, involves replacing Ethereum Virtual Machine, the software engine, which operates programs on the network, with RISC-V, a popular open source frame that offers built-in encryption and other benefits. .

EVM is an important piece of Ethereum’s underlying design and has been seen as one of the most important elements that helped the network succeed in a crowded field of other blockchains. Many nonthereum networks have used EVM to build their own chains, as well as a growing ecosystem of LAG-2 networks built on top of Ethereum, including Coinbase’s basic chain.

EVM has long played a significant role in Ethereum’s development. Other chains that use it may seamlessly connect with apps at Ethereum, and developers on EVM-based networks can surpass more smoothly to build applications directly within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Butterin claimed that the transition of Ethereum to a RISC-V architecture “improves the effectiveness of the Ethereum execution layer to a large extent that solves one of the primary scaling bottle neck and can also greatly improve the simplicity of the execution layer.” (The execution layer is the part of the network that reads smart contracts.)

The RISC-V architecture, which has seen limited adoption in other blockchain ecosystems, such as polkadot, could, according to butterin, offer “efficiency gains over 100x” to certain kinds of applications, according to Barterin. These improvements could reduce the cost of the network – long as an important barrier to adoption.

Among the primary benefits of RISC-V is its original support for certain kinds of encryption. Transition to the new architecture could, in Barterin’s view, be a simpler alternative to the current plan of society, involving the reconstruction of EVM around zero-knowledge cryptography.

Barterin’s proposal is something that developers would tackle in the long term, comparable to projects such as Beam Chain, which appear to restore Ethereum’s consensus layer.

RISC-V comes at a time of wider soul search for the Ethereum community. Recently, transaction volumes have declined and Ethereum’s token is limp behind the wider market.

Earlier this year, the Ethereum Foundation, the primary non-profit that supports the development of the wider Ethereum ecosystem, underwent a leadership transition in an attempt to alleviate the impression among members of the community that the ecosystem lacked a clear timetable and lost its lead compared to competitors.

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