I just saw Vitalik Buterin post about an interesting Ethereum upgrade. This time, he discusses two major development plans that will change the engine of the network.

The first important thing is to improve the state structure. Instead of using the current hexadecimal MPT with Keccak, Ethereum will switch to a binary tree structure that uses a more efficient hash function, (EIP-7864). From what I've heard, adopting this binary tree will reduce the length of Merkle branches by up to 4 times, which means proof verification (proof) will be 3 to 100 times faster. It also lowers the cost of accessing nearby stored data.

But what interests me even more is his long-term plan. Vitalik suggests that in the future, Ethereum should replace the EVM with a RISC-V architecture to achieve better performance, proof-friendliness (proof-friendly), and a simpler design. This is no small change.

Such a major transformation won't happen all at once. Vitalik plans it in three steps: first, enabling the use of precompiles; second, allowing users to deploy new VM contracts; and finally, replacing the EVM with a smart contract running on the new VM. This is a carefully thought-out design to ensure a smooth transition.

What I find particularly interesting is that this binary tree structure isn't just a minor technical tweak. It's laying a new foundation for efficient proofs, which will help Ethereum scale better in the future. Both reducing proof size via the binary tree and switching to RISC-V point in the same direction: making the network more scalable and faster.