Original Title: Simplifying the L1

Original Author: Vitalik Buterin

Translator: Asher (@Asher0210_)

Editor's Note: Once upon a time, Bitcoin amazed us—a protocol understandable even by a high school student, yet capable of supporting the operation of a global decentralized financial system. However, looking back at Ethereum, the promised "world computer" is now trapped by complexity: from a cumbersome virtual machine and a difficult-to-maintain consensus mechanism to layers of precompiled contracts, data structures, and Gas mechanisms. It is time to set off again, bringing Ethereum back to a simple path, not just scalable but also understandable, maintainable, and verifiable.

Ethereum's goal is to become the world's ledger—a platform for carrying civilizational assets and records, supporting key infrastructure such as finance, governance, and high-value data certification. To achieve this vision, two core capabilities must be balanced: scalability and resilience.

The Fusaka hard fork will bring a tenfold increase in L2 data space, and the 2026 roadmap also plans for similar expansions for L1. Meanwhile, the Merge has transitioned Ethereum to PoS consensus, rapidly improving client diversity, advancing research on ZK verifiability and quantum resistance, and strengthening the application layer. But beyond scaling and performance, there is another easily overlooked yet equally important foundation of resilience: the simplicity of the protocol.

Simplicity is the ultimate shield of decentralization

What is most impressive about Bitcoin is its extreme simplicity:

• The blockchain consists of a series of blocks;

• Each block is linked to the previous block via a hash;

• Blocks are verified through PoW, checking if the first few digits of their hash are 0;

• Each block contains transactions, with the transaction fees generated by mining or previous transactions.

A high school student who understands code can fully grasp how the Bitcoin protocol operates, and a programmer could even implement a client as a hobby project. This simplicity brings the following benefits:

• Easier to be widely understood, lowering the barriers to research and development, preventing domination by "technocrats";

• Reduces the cost of developing new clients, validators, tools, and other interface infrastructures;

• Decreases the complexity of long-term maintenance;

• Lowers the risk of major security vulnerabilities and makes it easier to verify protocol correctness;

• Reduces the social attack surface that can be manipulated by special interests.

Historically, Ethereum has not performed well in this regard, leading to unnecessary development costs, security risks, and a closed research culture. In the next five years, Ethereum has the potential to become almost as simple as Bitcoin, and we can approach this from two levels: the consensus layer and the execution layer.

Simplifying the consensus layer

The new consensus mechanism (previously known as the beam chain) integrates a decade of deep accumulation in consensus theory, ZK-SNARKs, staking economics, and more, aiming to build a long-term optimal and significantly simplified consensus layer. Key measures include:

• Three-slot finality: removing the complex logic of slots and epochs; no longer needing committee shuffles, synchronized committees, etc.; can be implemented in about 200 lines of code; achieving security closer to optimal compared to the current Gasper protocol.

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

• Simplified state transition logic: redesigning mechanisms for validators to join, exit, withdraw, and switch keys; reducing code complexity and more clearly expressing key behaviors like subjective periods.

The benefit of the consensus layer is its relative independence from EVM execution, allowing for more freedom in these upgrades. The real challenge lies in simplifying the execution layer.

Simplifying the execution layer

The execution layer is the true "gathering place of black magic": a complex EVM instruction set, lengthy and difficult-to-understand precompiled contracts, and an overly burdensome historical compatibility, thus replacing EVM with a simple, high-performance, ZK-native friendly VM, such as RISC-V, which has the following advantages:

• Direct performance improvement of 100 times;

• Seamless integration with mainstream programming languages;

• Can run natively in zero-knowledge proof systems;

• Clear static structure, beneficial for auditing and security verification;

• Almost no need for precompiled contracts, and in the future, even quantum-resistant algorithms can be natively deployed.

However, migration is not a forced "hard fork," but rather allowing old contracts to continue running in an EVM interpreter, which itself is a contract written in RISC-V. Just as Apple transitioned to ARM chips using Rosetta, Ethereum can upgrade its virtual machine painlessly.

Shared components, creating a more elegant system foundation

The future Ethereum protocol should integrate more "shared components" to thoroughly reduce system complexity:

• Unified erasure codes: for data availability sampling, historical storage, and P2P broadcast acceleration, avoiding redundant designs;

• Unified serialization format (SSZ): similar to the current ABI, well-compatible but more efficient, facilitating L2 decoupling;

• Unified state tree structure (binary tree): more suitable for ZK proofs, faster, and simpler.

This means that the Ethereum foundation will no longer consist of "various patched compromises," but will be built on "protocol blocks" constructed with true engineering aesthetics.

The end of complexity is the best time to start simplifying

Simplicity is similar to decentralization in many ways; both are upstream values leading to system resilience. Truly valuing simplicity requires a cultural shift; its benefits are often difficult to quantify immediately, while the costs of abandoning flashy features and putting in extra effort become apparent right away. However, over time, the value of simplicity will gradually emerge, with Bitcoin being the best example.

Drawing on the ideas of tinygrad, we should set a maximum line count goal for consensus code in Ethereum's long-term specifications, aiming to keep the complexity of the consensus critical path as close to Bitcoin's simplicity level as possible. Logic related to historical rules will still be retained but should be isolated outside the consensus path. Meanwhile, the overall design should adhere to the principle of "prioritizing simpler solutions," favoring local encapsulation over systemic complexity, and prioritizing architectural choices with clear attributes and verifiability.

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