Vitalik Buterin Envisions Ethereum as Simple as Bitcoin in Five Years

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has proposed a reset for the platform, aiming to simplify Ethereum's protocol to be as straightforward as Bitcoin’s within five years. In a blog post dated May 3, 2025, titled Simplifying the L1, Buterin emphasized the importance of simplicity, citing Bitcoin’s elegantly simple protocol as a key factor in its global trust and credibility.

Buterin noted that simplifying the protocol would provide long-term benefits, despite short-term costs, similar to the benefits gained from decentralization. He believes that for Ethereum to continue being a foundational layer for decentralized finance and next-gen internet applications, it must return to its fundamental principles of simplicity.

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The Ethereum co-founder acknowledged that Ethereum’s current complexity has led to technical debt, causing the protocol to become more difficult to manage. He compared Ethereum’s intricate design to Bitcoin’s simplicity, stating that even a high school student could understand Bitcoin’s mechanics, while Ethereum requires specialized teams and deep expertise to handle its complexity.

Buterin pointed out that Ethereum’s execution engine (EVM) has become bloated and harder to optimize, suggesting replacing it with RISC-V, a minimalist virtual machine already used in zero-knowledge cryptography projects. He also proposed merging redundant tools and adopting more efficient cryptographic techniques, such as unified erasure coding and binary Merkle trees, to streamline the system.