Vitalik's new article: Ethereum will be as simple as Bitcoin in the future

Original title: Simplifying the L1

Original author: Vitalik Buterin

Compiled by: Asher

Editor 's note: Once upon a time, Bitcoin surprised us - a protocol that a high school student could understand could support the operation of the global decentralized financial system. When we look back at Ethereum, the once promised "world computers" are now trapped by complexity: from bulky virtual machines, difficult-to-maintain consensus mechanisms, to layer-by-layer precompiled contracts, data structures and Gas mechanisms. It's time to start again and let Ethereum return to its concise track, not only scalable, but also understandable, maintainable and verifiable.

Ethereum’s goal is to become a world ledger - a platform that carries civilized assets and records, and to support the underlying protocols of key infrastructure such as finance, governance, and high-value data certification. To realize this vision, two core abilities must be taken into account: scalability and resilience.

Fusaka hard fork will bring a 10-fold increase in the L2 data space, and the 2026 roadmap is also planning to expand the L1 similarly. At the same time, Merge has turned Ethereum to PoS consensus, client diversity has improved rapidly, research on ZK verifiability and quantum attack resistance has continued to advance, and the application layer has become increasingly powerful. But in addition to scaling and performance, there is also a resilience basis that is easily overlooked but equally important: the simplicity of the protocol.

Simplicity is the ultimate shield of decentralization

The most amazing thing about Bitcoin is the ultimate simplicity of its protocol:

• A blockchain consists of a string of blocks;

• Each block is linked to the previous block by hashing;

• The block passes PoW verification, that is, check whether the first few digits of its hash are 0;

• Each block contains transactions, which consume coins generated by mining or preamble transactions.

A high school student who knows code can fully understand the operating principles of the Bitcoin protocol. A programmer can even use it as an amateur project to implement the client. This simplicity brings the following benefits:

• It is easier to be widely understood, lower the threshold for research and development, and prevent being dominated by "technical bureaucrats";

• Reduce the cost of developing interface infrastructure such as new clients, validators, tools, etc.;

• Reduce the complexity of long-term maintenance;

• Reduce the risk of major security breaches and make it easier to verify the correctness of the protocol;

• Reduce the social attack surface that is manipulated by special interests.

Historically, Ethereum has not done an ideal job in this regard, which has led to unnecessary development costs, security risks and closed research culture. In the next five years, Ethereum has the potential to become almost as concise as Bitcoin, and we can start from two levels: the consensus layer and the execution layer.

Simplify the consensus layer

The new consensus mechanism in the future (formerly known as beam chain) integrates the in-depth accumulation of consensus theory, ZK-SNARK, pledge economy and other aspects over the past decade. The goal is to build a long-term optimal and significantly simplified consensus layer. Key measures include:

• Three-slot finality: removes the complex logic of slot and epoch; no longer requires committee shuffle, synchronization committee and other mechanisms; basically implements about 200 lines of code to write; it has closer to the optimal security than the current Gasper protocol.

• Simplified fork choice and network structure: fewer active validators allow for simpler fork selection rules; STARK aggregation allows anyone to become an aggregator without trust and complex payments; a more robust p2p architecture.

• Simplify the logic related to state transition: redesign the mechanisms of validators such as joining, exiting, extracting, and key switching; reduce code complexity and express key behaviors such as subjective cycles more clearly.

The benefit of the consensus layer is that it is more independent from EVM execution, allowing for more freedom in these upgrades. The real difficulty lies in how to simplify the execution layer.

Simplify the execution layer

The execution layer is the real "black magic gathering place": complex EVM instruction sets, long and difficult precompiled contracts, difficult-to-extend SELFDESTRUCT, and historical compatibility burdens are too heavy. Therefore, a simple, high-performance, ZK native-friendly VM is replaced by EVM, such as RISC-V. Its advantages include:

• The performance is directly improved by 100 times;

• Seamlessly connect with mainstream programming languages;

• Can run natively in a zero-knowledge proof system;

• Clear static structure is conducive to auditing and security verification;

• There is almost no precompiled contracts required, and even quantum-resistant algorithms can be deployed natively in the future.

But migration is not a tough "hard fork", but allows the old contract to continue running in an EVM interpreter, which itself is a contract written by RISC-V. Just as Apple transitioned to ARM chips with Rosetta, Ethereum can upgrade virtual machines without pain.

Share components to create a more elegant system dock

In the future, the Ethereum protocol should integrate more "shared components" to completely reduce system complexity:

• Unified erasure coding: used for data availability sampling, historical storage, P2P broadcast acceleration to avoid repeated designs;

• Unified Serialization Format (SSZ): Similar to the current ABI, it is well compatible but more efficient, which is conducive to L2 decoupling;

• Unified State Tree Structure (Binary Tree): More suitable for ZK Proof, faster and simpler.

This means that the underlying layer of Ethereum is no longer composed of "various patched compromises", but is a "protocol building block" truly built with engineering aesthetics.

Complexity is the best time to start simplifying

Simplicity is similar to decentralization in many ways, and is an upstream value to system resilience. True emphasis on simplicity requires cultural changes, and its benefits are often difficult to quantify immediately, while the price of abandoning glamorous functions and paying extra effort is immediately revealed. But as time goes by, the simplicity of value will gradually emerge, and Bitcoin is the best example.

Drawing on tinygrad's ideas , we set the maximum number of lines of consensus code for Ethereum's long-term specifications, aiming to make the complexity of the critical path of consensus as close to the simplicity of Bitcoin as possible. The logic related to historical rules will still be retained, but should be isolated from non-consensus paths. At the same time, the overall design should adhere to the concept of "prioritizing simpler solutions", preferring local packaging rather than systematic complexity, and prioritizing architectural choices with clear attributes and verifiability.