Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed replacing the contract language of the current Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with a RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture to improve the speed and efficiency of the execution layer of the Ethereum network. Buterin outlined several long-term bottlenecks to Ethereum network scaling in his April 20 proposal, including stable data availability sampling, ensuring block production remains competitive, and zero-knowledge EVM proofs. Buterin believes that implementing the RISC-V architecture in smart contracts can keep the block production market competitive and improve the efficiency of zero-knowledge functions in the execution layer. "Sharding blockchain work has great potential for greatly simplifying Ethereum's consensus layer, but this radical change may be the only viable path for the execution layer to achieve similar benefits," he writes.