Vitalik Buterin reveals: Why did Ethereum abandon eWASM and turn to RISC-V? During the April 2025 Pragma Taipei fireside chat, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin explained why eWASM was abandoned. He pointed out design flaws in the EVM, such as the meaningless CALLCODE instruction, and noted that eWASM was once the preferred alternative. However, due to delays in 'The Merge' and the explosive growth of SNARKs technology, Ethereum decided to shift to a solution more friendly to ZK. Vitalik stated that RISC-V, widely used in zkEVM, is the right direction for the evolution of Ethereum's virtual machine. Source: ETHGlobal - Pragma Taipei 2025