Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled an ambitious new proposal that promises to turbocharge Ethereum’s scalability and privacy while preserving decentralization.
In a detailed blog post on May 19, Buterin introduced the concept of partially stateless nodes – a breakthrough approach designed to make running Ethereum nodes easier, more efficient, and censorship-resistant.
Here’s what you need to know.
The Hidden Danger of RPC Centralization
There is a growing risk in the Ethereum ecosystem: the increasing dominance of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) providers. These services allow wallets, users, and decentralized apps to interact with Ethereum without running their own full nodes, but there’s a catch.
“A market structure dominated by a few RPC providers will face strong pressure to deplatform or censor users,” Buterin warned.
Some providers already exclude entire countries, creating a dangerous concentration of power that threatens Ethereum’s foundational principles of openness and trustlessness.
What Are Partially Stateless Nodes – And Why They Matter
Buterin’s solution? Partially stateless nodes – a novel node design that validates blocks “statelessly.” Unlike traditional full nodes that require storing the entire blockchain history and all Merkle proofs, these nodes selectively keep only relevant data subsets.
This means users can configure their nodes to store data tied to their own accounts, frequently used decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and popular tokens like Ether and stablecoins. Queries outside this stored subset either fail or are routed through RPC providers, dramatically reducing storage needs and bandwidth without sacrificing security.
Balancing Efficiency, Privacy, and Trust
As Ethereum scales and gas limits rise, running a full node becomes increasingly resource-intensive. Partially stateless nodes aim to ease this burden, enabling more users to run nodes locally and maintain privacy-preserving access to blockchain data.
Beyond reducing resource demands, this design addresses metadata privacy concerns, helping users avoid exposing their full transaction activity.
The approach aligns with ongoing Ethereum Improvement Proposals like EIP-4444, which focuses on decentralized history storage, and reflects Buterin’s broader push to keep Ethereum’s infrastructure robust and user-friendly.
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FAQs
Partially stateless nodes validate blocks without storing all blockchain data, keeping only relevant subsets for efficiency and privacy.
By lowering storage and bandwidth needs, more users can run nodes, bolstering the network’s overall resilience and accessibility as it scales.
Users gain more control over their data, reduce reliance on potentially censoring RPC providers, and lower the barrier to node operation.
