Vitalik proposes simplifying Ethereum L1, aiming to achieve protocol simplicity similar to Bitcoin within five years

BlockBeats News: On May 3rd, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted a blog post stating that Ethereum's goal is to become a "world ledger": a platform for storing civilized assets and records, as well as a foundational layer for finance, governance, and high-value data authentication. This requires two points: scalability and elasticity. The goal of this post is to focus on an extremely important but easily underestimated aspect of resilience (ultimately also related to scalability): the simplicity of the protocol. One of the best aspects of Bitcoin is its protocol design, which is extremely simple and elegant. Maintaining the simplicity of the protocol helps Bitcoin or Ethereum become a trusted, neutral, and globally trusted infrastructure layer. In the past, Ethereum often did not do enough in this regard. This article will discuss how Ethereum can become almost as concise as Bitcoin in the next five years. Simplified consensus layer: The new consensus layer (formerly known as "Beam Chain") aims to leverage all the experience we have accumulated in consensus theory, ZK-SNARK development, proof of stake economics, and other fields over the past decade to create a long-term optimal consensus layer for Ethereum. The advantage of this consensus layer is that it is much simpler than existing beacon chains. Simplify Execution Layer: The complexity of EVM is increasing, and much of this complexity has been proven unnecessary (in many cases my fault). It is recommended to replace EVM with RISC-V or use other virtual machines that can write Ethereum ZK provers. I suggest we learn from the approach of the Tinygrad project and set a 'maximum code line target' for Ethereum's long-term technical specifications, with the goal of making key consensus related code in Ethereum as concise as possible to Bitcoin. The code related to the handling of Ethereum's historical rules will still be retained, but it should be avoided from entering the consensus critical path. At the same time, we should also implement the following principles in the overall design philosophy: prioritize simpler solutions where possible, lean towards "encapsulated complexity" rather than "systematic complexity", and prioritize solutions with clear verifiable properties and guarantees in design decisions.