Vitalik Outlines Execution Layer Roadmap, Involving State Tree and Virtual Machine Changes

Odaily News Vitalik posted on social media outlining the execution layer roadmap, with key adjustments focusing on the state tree and the virtual machine. Regarding the state tree, he supports upgrading the current hexary Merkle-Patricia tree to a binary tree structure based on more efficient hash functions via EIP-7864, aiming to shorten Merkle branch lengths and reduce verification bandwidth costs. Hash functions like Blake3 or the Poseidon family could be used. The binary tree scheme will also group storage slots into pages to lower the cost of accessing adjacent storage and reserve metadata bits for future state expiration functionality.

Regarding the virtual machine, Vitalik Buterin proposed the long-term direction of replacing the EVM, potentially adopting a RISC-V architecture. The new virtual machine needs to improve execution efficiency and proof efficiency, support client-side generation of ZK proofs, and simplify code implementation. The deployment path includes first replacing precompiled contracts, then supporting the deployment of new virtual machine contracts, and ultimately achieving backward compatibility while gradually replacing the EVM.