As Ethereum continues to evolve, so do conversations about its technical foundations. One of the most intriguing developments making waves across the developer community is a new proposal to introduce a RISC-V-based virtual machine (VM) for Ethereum. First floated by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and expanded upon by researchers and core developers, the idea has sparked debate about scalability, decentralization, and the long-term health of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Here's what you need to know.

1. Open-source foundation

RISC-V is a free and open instruction set architecture (ISA) that’s become increasingly popular in academia, chip design, and emerging hardware. Unlike proprietary ISAs like x86 or ARM, RISC-V allows anyone to build processors and software stacks without licensing fees. Advocates argue that Ethereum adopting RISC-V could increase transparency, foster innovation, and reduce dependency on corporate-controlled architectures.

2. Rethinking the EVM

The current Ethereum Virtual Machine is custom-built and highly specialized. It was designed for blockchain constraints like determinism and gas metering, but it's also notoriously difficult to optimize or port to new environments. A RISC-V-based VM could make Ethereum more accessible to developers familiar with mainstream computing architectures and potentially unlock performance and cross-platform benefits that the EVM can't offer today.

3. Better for zk-proofs

Zero-knowledge (zk) rollups are a big part of Ethereum’s scaling future. A RISC-V VM could significantly improve the efficiency of zk-proofs, since RISC-V has a simpler, more predictable instruction set that's easier to simulate in cryptographic circuits. This could accelerate the adoption of zkEVMs or even enable new flavors of L2 solutions with better performance and lower costs.

4. Still just a proposal

While Vitalik’s blog post generated buzz, the RISC-V VM is far from confirmed. It’s not yet an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), and there are still open questions around implementation, compatibility, and governance. Developers would need to build tooling, clients, and compilers around this new VM—no small feat. It’s likely to be a years-long effort, if it moves forward at all.

5. Not a replacement—yet

This isn’t necessarily about replacing the EVM entirely, but rather an exploration of alternatives—a potential parallel track that could complement Ethereum’s main execution layer. If successful, a RISC-V VM could run alongside the EVM, offer new experimentation grounds for developers, or even lay the foundation for a future Ethereum “engine upgrade.”

As Ethereum continues to push toward modularity, scalability, and decentralization, reimagining the virtual machine layer is a natural next step. The RISC-V proposal may be early-stage, but it’s part of a broader shift: Ethereum isn’t just evolving through apps and rollups—it’s questioning its deepest assumptions about how computation happens on-chain.