Vitalik outlines the Ethereum execution layer roadmap, focusing on major changes to the state tree and virtual machine.

ChainCatcher news, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a post on social media outlining the Ethereum execution layer roadmap, focusing on two major changes: the state tree and the virtual machine.

Regarding the state tree, Vitalik supports upgrading the current hexadecimal Merkle Patricia tree to a binary tree based on a more efficient hash function through EIP-7864. This change can shorten Merkle branches by four times, reducing client verification data bandwidth costs; at the same time, the hash function can be switched to the Blake3 or Poseidon series, greatly improving proof efficiency. The binary tree design also groups storage slots into "pages," making access to adjacent storage less costly, allowing many DeFi applications to save over 10,000 Gas per transaction. In addition, the binary tree structure is simpler and can reserve metadata bits for future state expiry features.

As for the virtual machine, Vitalik proposed that the long-term direction is to replace the EVM, possibly adopting the RISC-V architecture. The new VM needs to meet four goals: higher raw execution efficiency so that most precompiles are no longer necessary; proof efficiency superior to the EVM; support for client-side generation of ZK proofs; and maximum simplification of code implementation. He pointed out that if Ethereum only stays at the "EVM+GPU" level, it is certainly "good enough," but a better VM can make the protocol much stronger. The deployment roadmap is divided into three steps: the new VM is first used to replace precompiles; then users are allowed to deploy contracts based on the new VM; and finally, the EVM is retired, with smart contracts written in the new VM, achieving full backward compatibility.