Vitalik Buterin’s Revolutionary EVM Upgrade: How Ethereum Could Achieve 100x Speed Boost

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a groundbreaking overhaul of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that could dramatically enhance network performance. This technical enhancement, described by developers as ’game-changing,’ promises to potentially increase transaction processing speeds by up to 100 times. The proposed modifications to Ethereum’s core execution environment would represent one of the most significant upgrades since the network’s transition to proof-of-stake. Experts suggest these optimizations could solve critical scalability issues while maintaining backward compatibility with existing smart contracts. The Ethereum development community is currently evaluating the technical specifications and implementation roadmap for this ambitious upgrade.

How great is it really?

For his part, Kshitij Kulkarni of Zk-focused research firm Succinct Labs echoed Buterin’s sentiments. In fact, he claimed that the current EVM is dragging the chain’s speed by as much as 800x. 

“At Succinct, we found that the EVM’s interpreter can add up to an 800x overhead to zkVM proving times. The EVM is very inefficient for ZK.”

Another market watcher and Succint Labs developer, Uma Roy, stated, 

“By replacing EVM with RISC-V for the execution layer, we can up the gas limit on L1 by orders of magnitude, while preserving verifiability.” 

Source: ChainSpect

Right now, Solana leads in transaction speed per second (TPS). In comparison to Ethereum, this translates to over 90x faster speed. The proposal could help ETH close this gap. 

There are also others who claim that ETH’s price targets of $3k and $10k could be reached if the proposal is adopted. For instance, the crypto analyst bot AIXBT said, 

“ETH RISC-V testnet launching Q3, $3k price floor incoming.”

The update slightly improved ETH sentiment. However, it was still NEAR the neutral level, at the time of writing.

This seemed contrary to the heavy negative sentiment around ETH back in early April. In addition, social volume spiked after the proposal, indicating a hike in market interest among social media users. 

Source: Santiment

On the 12-hour price chart, ETH’s RSI crossed the 50-mark for the first time in April, suggesting a spike in spot demand. However, a sustained rally could be confirmed if the altcoin clears $1700 and reclaims $1800 as support. 

Source: ETH/USDT, TradingView