State Tree Upgrade: A More Efficient Data Structure
According to Vitalik, Ethereum is advancing a major upgrade through EIP-7864, transitioning from the current hexadecimal Merkle Patricia tree to a more efficient binary tree structure.
Key advantages of this upgrade include:
- Reducing Merkle branches by 4x, lowering validation bandwidth costs
- Supporting hash functions like Blake3 or Poseidon for significantly improved proof efficiency
- Simplified binary tree design, reserving metadata bits for future state expiration features
Importantly, the binary tree introduces a "page" concept, grouping storage slots to reduce access costs for adjacent data. High-frequency DeFi applications can save over 10,000 gas per transaction.
VM Revolution: Moving Toward a More Powerful Execution Environment
Vitalik also outlined the long-term evolution path for Ethereum's virtual machine, planning to gradually replace the existing EVM with a new VM based on RISC-V architecture.
The new VM aims to achieve four core goals:
- Higher raw execution efficiency, reducing the need for precompiles
- Better proof efficiency than EVM
- Support for ZK proof generation on the client side
- Maximized code implementation simplicity
The deployment roadmap will proceed in three phases:
- The new VM will first replace precompile functions
- Gradually allow users to deploy smart contracts based on the new VM
- Eventually phase out EVM, fully transition to the new VM while ensuring backward compatibility
Vitalik emphasized that while the current "EVM+GPU" solution is sufficient, a more advanced VM will empower Ethereum with stronger protocol capabilities.