Vitalik Buterin Proposes Ethereum Scaling Strategy to Boost Node Accessibility

Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has outlined a series of updates to the ETH blockchain scaling roadmap, aiming to make running personal nodes more accessible while supporting the network’s growth.

His proposal addresses a key challenge in Ethereum’s evolution: ensuring users can operate full nodes for trustless, private, and censorship-resistant interactions without being overwhelmed by increasing technical demands. By prioritizing local node usability alongside traditional Layer 1 (L1) scaling efforts, Buterin’s plan seeks to balance Ethereum’s decentralization ethos with its need for scalability. The adjustments include technological advancements like efficient gas pricing, reduced storage requirements, and a novel concept of partially stateless nodes, all designed to keep node operation manageable as the network expands.

Buterin’s suggestions come at a time when Ethereum faces scrutiny over the resource intensity of running full nodes, particularly as L1 gas limits rise. Full nodes are critical for validating the blockchain and enabling users to interact with it through local RPC servers, ensuring privacy and resistance to censorship. However, the growing storage and computational demands of nodes have made them less accessible to everyday users.

Buterin argues that advanced cryptographic solutions, such as zero-knowledge EVMs (ZK-EVMs) and private information retrieval (PIR), while promising, are not sufficient on their own. These solutions can be computationally expensive, leave metadata vulnerable, and risk creating centralized RPC provider markets susceptible to censorship. For these reasons, Buterin emphasizes the continued importance of enabling personal node operation.

Key Adjustments to Ethereum’s Scaling Roadmap

To address these challenges, Buterin proposes several short and medium term priorities. A primary focus is the full implementation of EIP-4444, which would limit each node to storing approximately 36 days of historical data, significantly reducing disk space requirements. This change tackles one of the biggest barriers to node operation, as storage needs currently deter many users.

Additionally, a distributed history storage solution using erasure coding would ensure older data remains accessible without burdening individual nodes or relying on centralized providers. Buterin also advocates for adjusting gas pricing to make data storage more costly while lowering execution costs, particularly for creating new state, such as initializing storage slots or contracts.

Looking further ahead, Buterin introduces the concept of partially stateless nodes, a new node type that could transform personal node operation. These nodes would verify blocks statelessly and maintain only a user-defined subset of the blockchain state, such as commonly used tokens or applications. By allowing users to configure which data their node prioritizes, this approach ensures local RPC capabilities remain efficient and privacy-focused, even if Ethereum’s L1 gas limit increases dramatically.

Unlike traditional full nodes, partially stateless nodes would not require storing Merkle branches, further reducing storage demands by roughly half. Users could manage their node’s configuration through an onchain contract, specifying which addresses or storage slots to track, providing flexibility and control.

Buterin’s roadmap reflects Ethereum’s commitment to decentralization while adapting to the realities of a scaling blockchain. By making personal nodes more accessible, these changes aim to empower users to engage with Ethereum directly, preserving the network’s core principles of trustlessness and privacy. As Ethereum continues to evolve, Buterin’s proposals offer a practical path to balance growth with accessibility, ensuring the blockchain remains a decentralized ecosystem for all.