04-29-2025 
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Ethereum is a mess, and Vitalik Buterin’s recent proposal suggests he knows it.
Lamenting how slow and expensive Ethereum’s execution layer has become and how messy its code has gotten over time, Buterin proposed replacing the EVM with something called RISC-V, a more general-purpose and efficient virtual machine he claims will be up to 100x faster.
Ethereum developers would still write smart contracts in Vyper or Solidity if the proposal was adopted, but they’d compile on RISC-V instead of EVM. The proposal would also allow developers to write smart contracts in Rust if they prefer.
However, regardless of whether this proposal is adopted or not, Ethereum will remain an ever-changing chimera that simply won’t scale. Furthermore, while everything will appear the same to developers, it’s yet another fundamental change, leading outsiders like me to wonder: What even is Ethereum in 2025?
A short history of Ethereum rewrites
Buterin launched Ethereum with good intentions—BTC Core had already taken control of the Bitcoin protocol by then, and they restricted what could be done on the Bitcoin network. Buterin, then a young idealist and optimistic visionary, launched Ethereum to allow people like him to build apps rather than HODL.
However, since its launch in July 2015, Ethereum has run into one brick wall or bottleneck after another. Since then, at least half a dozen network forks or upgrades have occurred, meaning Ethereum today holds little more than a name in common with what Buterin set out to create a decade ago.
Here are some of the fundamental changes the network has undergone:
2016, Rollback – In June 2016, a vulnerability in the Ethereum DAO allowed a hacker to steal 3.6 million ETH. After a heated debate, the community decided to hard fork and roll back the network, moving the stolen funds to a recovery contract. Some users rejected the rollback on principle, leading to the creation of Ethereum Classic.
2017, Byzantium Upgrade – This was the first stage of the Metropolis upgrade. It introduced new cryptographic primitives used in ZK-proofs and improved privacy tools. It also promised improved scalability.
2019, Constantinople & Istanbul – In February 2019, the Constantinople upgrade introduced gas cost optimizations and improved contracts. It also laid the groundwork for Ethereum 2.0. The December Istanbul upgrade introduced STARK/SNARK proof systems and made Ethereum more interoperable with ZCash.
2020, Ethereum 2.0 – As 2020 drew to a close, Ethereum launched the Beacon chain, switching from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). Ethereum staking began (locked until 2023), but no transactions were broadcast on this network yet.
2021, Berlin & London – In April, Berlin saw new transaction types, gas cost changes, and security upgrades. Later that year, EIP-1559 radically altered the economics of Ethereum by introducing a base fee burn mechanism. This burn mechanism made ETH a deflationary currency and changed economic incentives.
2022, The Merge – Ethereum officially transitioned to the Beacon Chain and became a PoS network. PoW was permanently turned off.2024, 2025 Changes – The past two years have seen various minor changes designed to move toward full sharding (EIP-4844), allow Ethereum clients to work without downloading the full state, and now the RISC-V proposal.
In short, Ethereum in 2025 bears only a vague resemblance to the initial design. While some of these upgrades have been positive or neutral, they have also fundamentally changed the network and its incentives, rolling it back, switching it to proof-of-stake, and radically altering its economics.
Yet, Ethereum is no better for it
Ethereum’s leadership, deeply focused on theoretical improvements, often overlooks the everyday user experience. That’s provable in how there are still relatively few useful applications on the network, and the user experience is nothing short of stressful. Unpredictable gas fees, unreliable rollups, insecure bridges, and a confusing maze of fragmented layer-two solutions make Ethereum a network best avoided by novices.
Ethereum holders and stakers aren’t thrilled, either. In an entirely predictable fashion, Ethereum’s layer two scaling solutions are siphoning revenue away from stakers, putting the network’s security at stake (pun fully intended). Some are calling for ‘taxes’ on layer two networks and to scale the base layer.
Given how CoinGeek predicted almost all of these issues when these upgrades were proposed and rolled out, this author would like to ask Ethereum advocates a question: How long will you continue to trust Buterin, a man who led you down the garden path, promising the moon and delivering only confusion, u-turns, and new problems? Could he be lost in the weeds and reacting to problems rather than planning for long-term success?
Ethereum once promised what BSV is now quietly delivering
Satoshi Nakamoto told early developer Mike Hearn that Bitcoin “never really hits a scaling ceiling.” He knew it could process many more transactions than Visa (NASDAQ: V) when he released it, and he talked openly about micropayments, small, casual transactions, and the many transaction types on Bitcoin.
Like Ethereum advocates, those who believe in big-block Bitcoin were frustrated by the dictates of unappointed Blockstream and Bitcoin Core overlords. Like you, we saw the potential for a truly scalable, open network with apps, smart contracts, and distributed governance.
However, unlike Buterin, who overlooked what Bitcoin was capable of, we abandoned BTC and restored the original protocol. Today, BSV can process 1 million transactions per second (TPS) for fractions of a penny, and the fees don’t increase with demand. We also said from the outset that PoS is doomed, so we stuck with PoW and advocated for unbounded blocks.
Unlike BTC, the original Bitcoin protocol has a smart contracting language, sCrypt, allowing developers to create all the apps they can on Ethereum. Our SDKs and dev tools lagged for a while since the focus was on restoring Bitcoin, but they have greatly improved. Check out the tools Project Babbage offers, for instance.
If you’re beginning to doubt Ethereum or want to test BSV out of curiosity, why not give it a go? It’s an open network you can test, explore, build on, and play with, and unlike Buterin, BSVers are committed to never fundamentally changing the protocol. The economic model is unalterable, the rules are set in stone, and nobody has the power to change them.
Curious? Grab a HandCash wallet and play some games, check out the BSV-powered cybersecurity tool Sentinel Node, or head over to the tools and libraries available via the BSV Association (BSVA). We welcome you, and if nothing else, we challenge you to try and prove us wrong!
Watch: Teranode is the digital backbone of Bitcoin
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