Vitalik unveils Ethereum's new blueprint: proposes "partial stateless nodes" to scale while protecting decentralization.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik announced the latest scalability proposal, attempting to enhance Layer-1 scalability through "partial stateless nodes" and a series of short-term measures, while maintaining the decentralization and trustworthiness of node operation.

The dilemma of L1 scaling: raising the gas limit without sacrificing node operation.

The Ethereum mainnet (Layer-1) has a limited number of transactions it can process per second, which has become a major bottleneck for scaling applications. To improve processing capacity, a common method is to increase the L1 gas limit (i.e., the maximum computational capacity that can be accommodated within a block). However, Vitalik pointed out that the community has concerns about this method, with the most common criticism being that it makes running a full node more difficult, thereby reducing the overall decentralization and security of the network.

Vitalik stated: "The reason why running a full node is important is that it provides users with a way to access the blockchain that is 'trustless, censorship-resistant, and privacy-focused.'"

(What is Gas Limit? Vitalik predicts that Ethereum will significantly increase the Gas limit in 2026, aiming not to sacrifice Decentralization)

Short-term strategy: Three major proposals to make nodes lighter

In order to increase the gas limit without sacrificing node performance, Vitalik proposed three short-term priority solutions:

Implementing EIP-4444: This proposal stipulates that nodes only need to retain a maximum of 36 days of historical data, which can significantly reduce storage requirements. Currently, a full node requires about 1TB of state data and 500GB of historical data; EIP-4444 will greatly alleviate this burden.

Establish a decentralized historical data storage system: Preserve old data through an external distributed data network, allowing nodes not to store it themselves.

Adjust the gas price structure: increase the cost of "storage" while reducing the cost of "execution," encouraging developers to optimize smart contract design and reduce storage pressure.

Mid-term strategy: "Stateless Verification" further simplifies Node data requirements.

Vitalik has listed "stateless verification" as a mid-term technical roadmap. This technology allows nodes to perform block verification without storing the complete Merkle branch (the structure used for data verification), which is estimated to reduce storage requirements by about 50%, further lowering the threshold for nodes.

This verification method also lays the foundation for future zkEVM (Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machine) and the combination of modular blockchains.

Innovative concept unveiled: "Partial Stateless Nodes" could potentially increase gas limit by 100 times.

In this blueprint, Vitalik first introduced the concept of "Partially Stateless Nodes." He stated that these nodes combine state validation with technologies like zkEVM, requiring no complete on-chain state data, but instead only storing selected partial data, thereby providing validation and query functions.

This means that even if nodes do not store all the data, they still have the capability to process transactions and query block data. If such nodes are widely deployed, there is potential to increase the L1 gas limit by 10 to 100 times.

Paving the way for future Ethereum upgrades

Vitalik's new technological blueprint aims to balance the contradiction between blockchain scalability and node operability. He emphasized that if the threshold for running a full node can be lowered through technological innovation, it will further solidify the balance among Ethereum's decentralization, security, and scalability, paving the way for future large-scale applications.

In this article, Vitalik unveils Ethereum's new blueprint: proposing "partial stateless nodes" to scale while protecting decentralization, first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.