Catenaa, Wednesday, March 04, 2026– Vitalik Buterin has outlined a two-part plan to revamp Ethereum’s execution layer, calling for a shift to a binary state tree and a long-term replacement of the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
In a post on X, Buterin said the state tree and virtual machine account for more than 80% of the network’s proving bottleneck.
He argued that incremental updates will not resolve inefficiencies tied to client-side proving and zero-knowledge tools.
The first proposal centers on EIP-7864, which would replace Ethereum’s current hexary Merkle Patricia Tree with a binary tree using a more efficient hash function.
The design would shorten Merkle branches and reduce bandwidth needs for light clients. Switching to hashes such as Blake3 or Poseidon could further improve proving performance, though Poseidon requires additional security review.
Interest in binary trees resurfaced after concerns about quantum vulnerabilities in elliptic curve cryptography, which had been used in earlier Verkle Tree proposals.
The second proposal calls for eventually replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine with RISC-V, an open-source instruction set widely used in zero-knowledge proving systems. Buterin described a phased rollout, beginning with limited use before fully retiring the current VM.
The plan has drawn debate, including support for WebAssembly as an alternative.
Upcoming upgrades, including Glamsterdam and Hegota expected in 2026, may factor execution layer changes into their roadmap.
