Vitalik Buterin has proposed replacing the EVM contract language with RISC-V to improve the speed and efficiency of the network’s execution layer

This proposal suggests replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V as the virtual machine language for smart contracts. This change aims to improve the efficiency and simplicity of the execution layer, addressing scalability bottlenecks and enabling significant performance gains.

Key Benefits:

• Improved efficiency: Replacing the EVM with RISC-V can reduce prover cycles by 50x, addressing a major bottleneck in Ethereum's scalability.
• Simplified execution layer spec: This change can simplify the execution layer spec, making it easier to maintain and improve.
• Interoperability: Old-style EVM contracts will continue to work and be fully interoperable with new-style RISC-V contracts.

Implementation Options:

• Supporting two VMs (EVM and RISC-V) with equal access to facilities.
• Converting existing EVM contracts to call an EVM interpreter contract written in RISC-V.
• Creating an explicit protocol feature for virtual machine interpreters, allowing for future additions.