Charles Hoskinson Backs Vitalik Buterin’s RISC-V Vision for Ethereum’s Future

The brief exchange occurred on Sunday after Buterin published his “Long-term L1 execution layer proposal” on the Ethereum Magicians forum. Hoskinson responded on X with a simple but pointed endorsement:

“It makes sense, we are using RISC-V with BitVMX. It’s the future.”

Buterin Proposes Replacing EVM With RISC-V

Buterin’s proposal suggests retiring the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in favor of RISC-V, an open-source and extensible instruction set architecture. He argues that the change would massively increase efficiency in Ethereum’s execution layer, resolve key scaling bottlenecks, and simplify the core codebase—without altering Ethereum’s familiar account model or opcode structure.

“SLOAD, SSTORE, CALL—these opcodes would be exposed as RISC-V syscalls,” Buterin explained, emphasizing compatibility with existing smart contracts.

To maintain backward compatibility, Buterin outlined several paths: from dual-VM environments to a full interpreter-based migration.

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ZK Proof Efficiency at the Core

The primary technical motivation is rooted in zero-knowledge proof performance. Drawing on data from Succinct’s ZK-EVM, Buterin points out that block execution consumes nearly half of all prover cycles—making it the most expensive operation in ZK circuits.

Other tasks, such as input deserialization, state root computation, and witness initialization, also contribute significantly, but Buterin argues that eliminating EVM translation layers through direct RISC-V integration could yield up to 100x performance improvements in some cases.

Even if other elements like pre-compiles become the new bottlenecks, he believes the switch to RISC-V would bring “very significant” gains in performance and scalability.

Growing Convergence in Blockchain Architecture

Hoskinson’s affirmation of the RISC-V approach adds intrigue.

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While Cardano and Ethereum have often been seen as rivals, this shared interest in a standardized, low-level architecture could point to a broader alignment of blockchain infrastructure goals, especially as both ecosystems pursue ZK-based scalability.

With industry giants now eyeing RISC-V as the next frontier for execution optimization, the stage may be set for a new era of modular, interoperable blockchain design.

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