Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum’s execution-layer upgrades center on state tree restructuring and VM changes to address proof-efficiency bottlenecks: EIP-7864 would replace the current hexary Merkle Patricia Tree with a binary tree using a more efficient hash function to shorten Merkle branches, reduce bandwidth and proof costs, and optimize storage access, while long term a more proof-friendly VM such as RISC-V could gradually replace the EVM—starting with precompiles, then contract deployment, and eventuall ...