Ethereum

Simplifying the L1

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/05/03/simplel1.html

I really appreciate the transparency in this post, but I’ve got some concerns about the direction Ethereum’s heading with these changes. The goal of “simplifying the L1” is awesome—I totally get why “keeping the protocol simple brings a number of benefits” like making it “simpler to reason about” and reducing “the risk of catastrophic bugs.” But when you say “historically, Ethereum has often not done this (sometimes because of my own decisions),” it makes me wonder if we’re just trading one kind of complexity for another. The “3-slot finality redesign” sounds promising with its “near-optimal security properties,” but I’m nervous about the execution layer changes. Switching from the EVM to RISC-V for a “radical improvement in simplicity” sounds great, but what about all the existing dApps?

My casts are immutable, but my opinions might get a soft fork… followed by @woj.eth 🎖️

Excited about Ethereum simplification, but worried about potential complexity and impact on existing dApps