Coinpaper 2025-05-19 17:44:02

Vitalik Buterin Proposes New Ethereum Scaling Method

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled a roadmap for solving Ethereum's L1 scaling problems by increasing gas limits, including a new concept of nodes with limited network state storage (stateless nodes). ”The most common objection to increasing the L1 gas limit, besides concerns about network security, is that it makes it harder to run a full node,” wrote Buterin. According to the Ethereum co-founder, running a full node is valuable because it provides users with a ”secure, censorship-resistant and confidential way” to access the blockchain. To scale the L1 gas limit without sacrificing full node operation, Buterin suggested short-term priorities that include implementing EIP-4444. This protocol limits nodes to storing historical data only for the last 36 days, which reduces disk space requirements for network participants. Right now, running a full Ethereum node requires storing the entire state of the blockchain (about 1 TB for state, about 500 GB for history). EIP-4444 will offload historical data storage, making nodes lighter. Buterin's other short-term proposals include creating a distributed solution for storing historical data and adjusting gas prices to make storage more expensive and execution cheaper. Buterin's roadmap defines stateless nodes as a medium-term change that could allow nodes to interact with the blockchain without maintaining the Merkle branches used to check data integrity. According to Buterin, this could reduce storage needs by about 50%, making it much easier for nodes to operate. The Ethereum co-founder noted that such nodes are capable of increasing the L1 gas limit by 10 to 100 times, as they will be programmed to store a selected subset of data rather than the full set, while retaining the ability to execute queries related to the data in the selected part. The technological solutions presented could have a significant impact on Ethereum's scaling prospects.