Vitalik Buterin Pushes to Strip Down Ethereum’s Complexity Like Bitcoin

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is calling for a major simplification of Ethereum’s underlying protocol, laying out a long-term plan to reduce its complexity and bring it closer to Bitcoin’s minimalist design—without sacrificing the network’s core innovations.

In a new blog post published over the weekend, Buterin emphasized the growing challenges posed by Ethereum’s expanding technical stack, including its consensus layer and virtual machine. He warned that unless addressed, this complexity could make Ethereum increasingly fragile and less accessible to developers.

“Even a smart high school student is capable of fully wrapping their head around and understanding the Bitcoin protocol,” Buterin noted. “A programmer can write a client as a hobby project.”

Too Much Complexity, Too Fast

Ethereum’s base layer has become increasingly sophisticated to support groundbreaking features like smart contracts, staking, and zero-knowledge proofs. But Buterin argues that this evolution has come with significant trade-offs: increased potential for bugs, difficulty in onboarding new contributors, and slower protocol upgrades.

Bitcoin, by contrast, has maintained a stripped-down approach—focused on core functions like transactions and proof-of-work—which Buterin sees as a model for long-term protocol resilience.

Simplification Strategy

One of the primary targets in Buterin’s plan is Ethereum’s consensus layer, known as the beacon chain. He singled out components such as epochs, slot randomization, and sync committees as areas where the current design is overly complex and could be streamlined.

Another central proposal involves the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Buterin advocates for transitioning to a more lightweight and efficient virtual machine like RISC-V, an open standard that could simplify the execution environment while improving performance, particularly in cryptographic applications.

Transitioning Without Disruption

Recognizing the challenge of preserving Ethereum’s extensive application ecosystem, Buterin proposed a gradual migration strategy. Both the current EVM and the new virtual machine could operate in tandem, with older features eventually moved to non-consensus layers—minimizing disruption while allowing for cleaner, future-proof development.

This vision signals a philosophical shift in Ethereum’s evolution: from expanding technical complexity to intentional simplification, making the protocol more understandable, secure, and sustainable for the long term.