Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin named the swelling volume and increasing complexity of the blockchain over time as one of the main problems of the network, and also considered ways to solve them.
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 5: the Purgehttps://t.co/ccGZDxgT6O
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 26, 2024
In the fifth part of the essay “The Possible Future of the Ethereum Protocol,” entitled “The Purge,” he pointed out two main “weak points” in this regard:
- historical data – any completed transaction and account should be stored by all clients forever and loaded when synchronized. As a result, this volume grows even if the network capacity remains unchanged;
- protocol functions – it is much easier to add a new one than to remove an old one, which leads to increased code complexity.
At the time of writing, a fully synchronized Ethereum node requires approximately 1.1 TB of disk space for the execution client and another “several hundred gigabytes” for the consensus client.
Buterin believes that one of the natural solutions to the problem is that each node stores only a small percentage of the data. Related to this is one of the main goals of The Purge stage – to simplify the launch of clients on users’ PCs.
As a result, you can get a network of 100,000 nodes, each of which contains a random set of 10% of historical information. Replicating these parts 10,000 times would be equivalent to complete storage.
The expert noted that out of the 1.1 TB execution client, history accounts for ~800 GB, and the rest is state data.
The volume of the latter component can be reduced by introducing expiration dates for storage, as well as partial availability of data with the option of completely “resurrecting” it if necessary, Buterin believes.
Regarding the complication of the protocol, he noted that removing “unnecessary” functions would require a compromise in ensuring backward compatibility.
Some improvements, such as removing old transaction types, permanently removing the Beacon Chain committee mechanism, or harmonizing the data format, are relatively easy to implement. Changes to other options, mostly hard-wired into the EVM, will require more analysis and technical work, Buterin said.
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Source: Cryptocurrency
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