Vitalik Buterin Proposes Simplified Ethereum Protocol in Bold New Design Overhaul

• Vitalik Buterin has proposed a major overhaul to simplify Ethereum’s core protocol, aiming to improve security, efficiency, and decentralization.
• He argues that reducing complexity in Ethereum’s design will make the network easier to maintain, foster innovation, and position it to play a key role in solving challenges related to artificial intelligence.

Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, thinks the network has become too complicated. He believes making the main parts of Ethereum simpler will make it safer, easier to grow, and more sustainable in the long run. He wrote about this idea, suggesting that Ethereum could learn from Bitcoin’s simple design.

Making Ethereum Simpler

Buterin’s ideas focus on the main parts of Ethereum: the system that agrees on new transactions (consensus) and the system that runs smart contracts (execution). He wants to get rid of complex steps that have built up over time. “The effort to revamp Ethereum’s consensus, historically called the beam chain, includes many opportunities to simplify consensus, while also increasing efficiency and security, ” he stated. Buterin says that being too complex slows down development, costs more to maintain, and increases the chance of errors.

One key idea is a new way for the consensus system to quickly agree on transactions, called 3-slot finality. This would remove complicated features like groups that check transactions and how validators are chosen. By having fewer active validators at once, the system could be simpler and safer, making it easier to build light clients, which are apps that don’t need to download the whole blockchain and reducing ways for attackers to cause problems.

For running programs, Buterin suggests moving from the current system (EVM) to a new one based on RISC-V. RISC-V is a simple, open-source system for computer instructions. He argued this would drastically improve efficiency, by over 100x in some cases, by removing interpreter overhead, and simplify the system thanks to RISC-V’s minimal design. The change would retain EOF benefits like better static analysis and larger code limits, while allowing more developer flexibility, including support for mainstream languages. Most precompiles could also be eliminated over time.

Buterin also called for everyone working on Ethereum to use the same tools and formats. He wants to use the same methods for things like storing data and organising information, hence reducing duplicate systems. 

Buterin said that simplicity is like being decentralised. He suggested that the most important parts of Ethereum should have a limit on how much code they use, similar to a small machine learning project called Tinygrad. Features that are not as critical could still be used, but would be kept separate from the main system.  

Beyond simplifying the core protocol, there’s a growing belief that Ethereum could play a big role in addressing problems in artificial intelligence. Eric Connor, a former core developer for Ethereum, said that the network’s biggest moment could come from working with AI. He explained that AI often suffers from centralisation, unclear algorithms, and privacy concerns. Connor believes Ethereum is in a unique position to help solve these issues. Ethereum is currently trading at $1,819, down 0.31% in the last 24 hours. 

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