Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called for simplifying Ethereum’s base protocol, aiming to make the network more efficient, secure and accessible, drawing inspiration from Bitcoin’s minimalist design.
In a blog post titled “Simplifying the L1,” published on May 3, Buterin laid out a vision to restructure Ethereum’s architecture across consensus, execution and shared components.
“This post will describe how Ethereum 5 years from now can become close to as simple as Bitcoin,” Buterin wrote, arguing that simplicity is key to Ethereum’s resilience and long-term scalability.
While recent upgrades like proof-of-stake (PoS) and Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK) integration have made Ethereum more robust, he said that technical complexity has led to bloated development cycles, higher costs and greater risks of bugs:
“Historically, Ethereum has often not done this (sometimes because of my own decisions), and this has contributed to much of our excessive