Ethereum Foundation new co-executive responds to Vitalik Buterin’s latest RISC-V proposal

Ethereum Foundation’s new co-executive director Tomasz K. Stańczak says Buterin’s proposals are meant to spark discussions and invite scrutiny regarding the network’s future goals and breakthroughs.

In a recent post following Buterin’s previous proposal on replacing Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine with RISC-V to improve long-term scalability, Stańczak said that under the change in leadership, the Foundation will shift its focus from research and development to working on Layer 1 scaling, Layer 2 support, optimizing user experience, and interoperability.

This includes improving the network under the new protocol upgrades, such as the upcoming Pectra upgrade, Fusaka and Glamsterdam.

As a result, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin will have a relatively smaller role in the network’s daily operational work. Instead, Buterin will be focusing his efforts on network-related research initiatives.

“We aimed, among other things, to free more of Vitalik’s time for research and exploration, rather than day‑to‑day coordination or crisis response. Each time Vitalik shares insights or communicates a direction, he accelerates major long‑term breakthroughs,” said Stańczak.

Stańczak went on to praise Buterin for his recent proposal on RISC‑V and zkVMs which he claimed has “advanced promising avenues.” Moreover, he also stated that Buterin’s proposals on privacy has helped realign the community with the network’s core values.

However, he took the opportunity to remind community members that although Buterin’s proposals hold significant impact, they are designed to spark conversations and should not be treated as final decisions. In fact, he emphasized that the community could very well refine proposals or even reject them outright.

“I want to make clear that Vitalik’s proposals will always carry weight, but they are intended to start conversations and encourage progress in difficult research areas,” continued Stańczak.

On April 20, Vitalik Buterin shared a proposal on the Ethereum Magicians forum where he advocated for switching the Ethereum Virtual Machine in favor of RISC-V, an open-source instruction set architecture.

He believed the change could greatly improve the network’s efficiency, especially in terms of for zero-knowledge-based scaling. The proposal was published only a few days prior to the network’s latest upgrade, which is set to go live on May 7.