Tech expert slams Ethereum design as ‘fundamentally broken’

Evan Cheng, a tech expert, CEO of Mysten Labs, slammed the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) as a “fundamentally broken” design. Cheng suggested the only fix to the EVM’s “design tech debt” would be “shooting it in the head and start over.”

Notably, Evan Cheng previously worked at Apple and, then, as Head of Research and Development at Novi and Technical Director of Meta – showing an impressive tech curriculum, now in charge of developing the Sui Network (SUI), an Ethereum (ETH) competitor.

In a video, shared by Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun, the CEO technically explains why the EVM design is broken. At the same time, Abiodun supported his colleague, writing this is why they “never prioritized EVM compatibility when building Sui.”

The EVM, however, is a well-adopted standard for the crypto industry. Notably, other experts agree with the two executives, urging developers to “move beyond dead-end designs.”

Most tech debt can be paid off, but a broken design is a dead end.

This is why we never prioritized EVM compatibility when building Sui.

EVM is a broken design and it’s time for this industry to move beyond dead-end designs. pic.twitter.com/l8JMcQW33V

— Adeniyi.sui (@EmanAbio) January 8, 2025

Why Ethereum Virtual Machine is a broken design and a tech debt

First, Evan Cheng starts explaining that the “Blockchain Trilemma” jargon has “no mathematical-backing behind it. It’s based on a wrong design.”

Adding to his thought line, the tech expert pointed to few staking pools significantly controlling most of Ethereum’s validating power. This, in his opinion, “is wrong” from a decentralization perspective, also challenging the so-praised “blockchain trilemma” by EVM supporters.

Cheng continues in this reasoning, explaining that the staking pool example proves that EVM supporters “science is wrong” and their “understanding is wrong” when resorting to the blockchain trilemma to somewhat argue that Ethereum is the only (or the most) decentralized layer-one blockchain.

“This is what happens when you build the wrong technology,” he concludes the first argument. “There is no path from that.”

Then, the expert explains that, while “tech debts” can be fixed over time, Ethereum has a “design tech debt.” So, “the only way to solve a lot of these problems is shooting it in the head and start over.”

In closing, Cheng mentions all the “hate” he receives for speaking against Ethereum and Solidity (EVM’s programming language) as another example of a “fundamentally broken” design.

“The only way to do it, to solve the problem, is shooting it in the head and move on from it. But, you already have so many people, companies, users, everybody, depending on it. So, even if you want to do it, it is a very difficult path.”

– Evan Cheng

Other experts opinion on the EVM wrong design

Interestingly, Mysten Labs executives and Sui developers are not the only blockchain and tech experts highlighting Ethereum design’s fundamental flaws.

Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, posted on January 8 that “Ethereum’s problem is not marketing. It’s product. No amount of marketing can fix a broken product,” he said.

Robert Sasu, core developer of MultiversX (EGLD), quoted Adeniyi Abiodun post with Evan Cheng’s video, agreeing with their arguments.

“First of all, I totally agree that EVM is a wrong design, as the token standards on EVM are of a wrong design. From this you cannot build insanely well made dApps and both the users and developers are always at a higher risk. EVM was a good start but people have to move on. It is like staying with steam engines when you have high performance electric motors.”

– Robert Sasu

According to Sasu, the SpaceVM built on top of WASM is a superior alternative. “WASM is a high performance electric motor which can be used to run almost any software.” Moreover, the tech expert criticized “single state blockchain networks” as another broken design, proposing sharding as a working solution.

Besides these two, more developers and experts from other blockchains like Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Algorand (ALGO), and Near Protocol (NEAR) have also shared similar opinions throughout the years, validating the, now growing opinion, that Ethereum has a “fundamentally broken” design, preventing the ecosystem to rise in real-world adoption.

Indeed, Finbold has reported how the EVM’s token design contributes to investors falling victim of phishing attacks and other exploits. Suggesting the use of blockchains with a “native token” design as a battle-tested solution to prevent the, already so-common, losses from compromised wallets.

Featured image from Shutterstock

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