Vitalik Buterin Proposes EIP7864 State Tree Overhaul and RISC-V VM Roadmap for Ethereum

On March 1, Vitalik Buterin detailed a significant plan to overhaul Ethereum's core execution stack, proposing EIP7864. This initiative aims to replace the existing hexary Keccak Merkle Patricia state tree with a more efficient binary tree, utilizing either Blake3 or Poseidon hash functions, as reported in a thread on X. The proposal seeks to reduce Merkle branch length and bandwidth for light clients, addressing what Buterin identifies as state tree and virtual machine components contributing over 80% of Ethereum's proof bottleneck. Furthermore, Buterin outlined a longer-term roadmap for transitioning from the EVM to a RISC-V based virtual machine. While state tree reform is advancing via the EIP7864 draft, with execution-layer optimizations expected in the Glamsterdam and Hegota hard forks from 2026, Offchain Labs argued in a November technical response that WebAssembly is better suited as a contract delivery format, and Buterin acknowledged no broad consensus yet exists on fully replacing the EVM.