February 21st – Community user dasha recently proposed phasing out the current Ethereum gradually via fragmentation (such as Layer 2s and application-specific chains) and rebuilding a pure cypherpunk chain from scratch based on RISC-V. Vitalik Buterin pushed back against the idea of the current Ethereum “dying slowly.” Instead, he plans to build a “cypherpunk-in-spirit, non-ugly Ethereum” as a tightly coupled extension of the existing system. The goal is to enable seamless interoperability and migrate the current system via smart contracts within 5 years. Vitalik stressed that after the earlier “Merge” upgrade, there will be 4 subsequent major upgrades: state tree optimizations, Lean consensus, ZK-EVM verification, and VM changes. These upgrades aim to enhance censorship resistance, ZK-friendliness, and simplicity.
