Vitalik Buterin Plans “Cypherpunk” Upgrade Path to Strengthen Ethereum Over the Next Five Years

• Vitalik Buterin has revealed plans to build a “cypherpunk principled non-ugly Ethereum” interoperable with the existing chain.
• The new network would run alongside Ethereum for years, but with its own lean consensus and a new virtual machine.

Vitalik Buterin has been known to make bold claims over the future of digital assets, the current market, Layer 2s, prediction markets, and just about anything else in crypto. His latest claim might be his boldest yet. He took to social media on Friday to reveal that he has plans to build an all-new network that would run alongside Ethereum and eventually replace it.

Vitalik was responding to a post suggesting that he should allow the network he created in 2014 to die off in its current form and rebuild an all-new chain that caters to the cypherpunks, “just to show who was the boss.” While this would be a paradigm-shifting move, Vitalik revealed he is “trying to do something even more ambitious.”

The plan is to build a new ‘non-ugly’ Ethereum based on cypherpunk principles, Vitalik revealed. The cypherpunk movement started in the ’80s and upholds privacy as a fundamental right, decentralization over trust, and the supremacy of code.

While he builds his new network, Vitalik noted that Ethereum must keep improving its cypherpunk properties. These include resistance to censorship, for which he has been a long-time advocate. As we reported, the Hegota upgrade, scheduled for later this year, could finally eliminate censorship through FOCIL, which prevents block builders from blocking any transaction submitted by validators.

Beyond censorship resistance, Vitalik also wants Ethereum to improve on its consensus properties and ZK-prover friendliness.

A Better Ethereum

Vitalik’s proposed network would be a bolt-on to the existing Ethereum network “in a way that’s as tightly integrated and interoperable as possible, and then grow it over time,” Vitalik revealed.

Ethereum has dozens of Layer 2s that have been built on top of the mainnet to offer scaling and privacy. However, these mainly rely on the underlying network’s technology, and only introduce tech such as rollups and zero-knowledge proofs.

The proposed network would not be like any of these L2s. First, it would come with a new state tree, according to Vitalik. Currently, Ethereum relies on the Merkle Patricia Tree to keep track of transactions, assets, and messages. Second, it would have a lean consensus, which suggests stripping the mechanism down to the minimum necessary logic to cut transaction time and fees.

Vitalik also mentioned ZK-EVMs. Today, these are only offered on L2s, like the zkSync Era, Scroll, and the Polygon zkEVM. With network-level ZK-EVMs, the network could prove that transactions have been executed off-chain without needing to conduct recomputation.

Lastly, Vitalik mentioned a change in the virtual machine. This would be a radical change that would shift the entire network’s operation. Currently, Ethereum relies on EVM. While it still works great for many applications, developers have criticized its lack of native zero-knowledge proving. L2s that offer ZK technology usually need complex engineering to pull it off. EVM is also inefficient in scaling.

The proposed network would run alongside Ethereum for up to five years. After that, the old Ethereum network would start to write its smart contracts in the language of the new network. Vitalik stated: