Is Ethereum facing a "state bloat" crisis? The Foundation launches three arrows to solve the node storage dilemma

The core research team at the Ethereum Foundation recently issued a clear warning, pointing out that network state bloat is becoming a potential bottleneck threatening Ethereum’s foundational decentralization. As account, contract data, and other information continue to grow daily, the costs for running full nodes in terms of storage and synchronization are steadily increasing, which could lead to network centralization around a few large operators. To address this, the research team proposed three major technical paths: “state expiration,” “state archiving,” and “partial statelessness,” aiming to reduce node burdens and ensure the network’s long-term resistance to censorship and resilience. This is not only a technical optimization but also a critical infrastructure battle that concerns whether Ethereum can support its vision of a “global settlement layer.”

State Bloat: The “Sweet Burden” Behind Ethereum’s Prosperity

If we imagine the Ethereum network as a never-ending global computer, then its “state” is the entire memory of this computer at any given moment—every account’s precise balance, internal storage data of each smart contract, and the underlying code powering thousands of decentralized applications. It is this ever-increasing state that supports billions of dollars in daily settlements. However, researchers at the Ethereum Foundation point out that this system faces a fundamental challenge: state only grows and never shrinks.

As Layer 2 scaling solutions, EIP-4844, and gas limit increases successfully drive network activity growth, they also act like opening a faucet, accelerating the accumulation of state data. For node operators worldwide, this means hardware must be continually upgraded, and the costs for syncing new blocks in terms of time and bandwidth are rising daily. The Foundation warned in a detailed blog that if this trend is not contained, eventually only a few well-funded, technically skilled operators will be able to afford running full nodes.

This potential centralization risk directly threatens Ethereum’s core values: censorship resistance, neutrality, and resilience. The security and degree of decentralization of the network ultimately depend on the broad distribution of independent validators. Therefore, the research team is actively conducting stress tests to identify critical thresholds: When will state growth become a throughput bottleneck? How large can the state volume get before nodes struggle to keep up with the latest blocks? At what scale of client software does operational failure begin? Forward-looking research into these questions highlights the urgency of solving state bloat.

Core Concepts of Ethereum State Bloat and Three Major Solutions

Core Issue: The global state of the network (accounts, contract data) grows linearly over time and never decreases, leading to rising node operation costs.

Key Contradiction: About 80% of state data has not been accessed in over 1 year, yet all full nodes still need to store it completely.

Proposed Technical Paths:

1. State Expiration: Move long-unused data out of “active state,” allowing users to re-activate it with cryptographic proof. This includes two modes: “mark-expire-reactivate” and “multi-era expiration.”
2. State Archiving: Differentiate between “hot data” (frequently accessed) and “cold data” (archived history), ensuring node performance does not degrade as the chain ages.
3. Partial Statelessness: Nodes only store a subset of the state, with wallets and light clients caching their necessary data, lowering participation barriers and reducing reliance on large RPC providers.

Shared Goal: Reduce the performance constraints imposed by state, cut storage costs, and make data services more accessible.

The Paradox of Stateless Validation: Whose Responsibility Is Data Storage?

As a key part of Ethereum’s long-term roadmap, “statelessness” allows validators to verify new blocks without holding the full state, significantly easing validator burden and increasing network throughput. However, the research team raises a profound question: If validators no longer store the entire state, who is responsible for safeguarding this vast amount of data?

The answer may point toward a more specialized and centralized group: block builders, RPC service providers, MEV searchers, and block explorer operators. This effectively shifts the responsibility of storing and providing historical data from a broad validator network to a smaller, more professional service layer. While this improves efficiency, it also introduces new risks. The team explicitly states that this potential centralization could lead to synchronization difficulties, weaken censorship resistance, and make the network more vulnerable if specific service providers fail or face external pressures.

Therefore, current research focus is not simply on achieving statelessness but on designing data storage architectures that can maintain or even enhance the network’s decentralization and resilience during the transition. This requires sophisticated economic models and protocol designs to ensure that even with specialized data storage, the network does not develop single points of failure or new monopolies. The three paths proposed by the Ethereum Foundation aim to solve this paradox—improving scalability while safeguarding the core attributes of the network.

Detailed Explanation of the Three Major Paths: How to “Lighten the Load” for Ethereum Nodes

Faced with the challenge of state bloat, the Ethereum Foundation’s “Stateless Consensus Team” does not offer a single solution but instead outlines three parallel or combined exploration paths, each aiming to alleviate storage pressure from different angles.

The first path, “State Expiration,” directly targets the core issue—massive “zombie data.” Data shows that about 80% of state has not been accessed in the past year but still consumes resources. This plan is to move long-inactive data out of the “active state set,” similar to memory cleanup in computers. When users need to access this data again, cryptographic proofs can be used to “wake” it. Currently considered are two sub-solutions: “mark-expire-reactivate” and “multi-era expiration,” both seeking the best balance between data cleanup and accessibility.

The second path, “State Archiving,” draws on traditional data management concepts of hot and cold storage. It keeps frequently accessed “hot state” within a manageable size for quick response, while archiving historical “cold state” for audits and validation. This design helps maintain node performance over time, preventing degradation as the chain ages and data volume increases. It is vital for ensuring new nodes can sync smoothly and for the long-term health of the network.

The third path, “Partial Statelessness,” is a more gradual and flexible strategy. It allows nodes to store only a subset of the entire state, relying on wallets and light clients to cache their relevant data. This approach can significantly lower hardware barriers for participation, enabling more individuals and small organizations to run nodes, thereby reducing reliance on a few large RPC providers and promoting decentralization from another perspective.

Future Outlook: An Evolution of Protocols Requiring Community Governance

The Ethereum Foundation explicitly states that solving state bloat is not a “surprise attack” that the core team can accomplish alone but a “long-term battle” requiring deep community involvement. Their current strategy is dual-track: on one hand, prioritize practical work that can deliver immediate benefits—such as improving archiving tools, optimizing RPC infrastructure, and lowering the barrier to running partial stateless nodes; on the other hand, conduct long-term research and preparations for more promising protocol-level changes.

The team has already reached out to developers, node operators, infrastructure providers, and all stakeholders concerned with Ethereum’s long-term health, inviting feedback, forum discussions, and testing of new solutions. This open collaborative approach reflects Ethereum’s governance culture. Notably, the Foundation emphasizes at the beginning of the article that these proposals represent the research team’s ideas, not a unified stance of the Foundation, highlighting an environment that encourages diverse viewpoints.

This focused discussion on state bloat is part of the Foundation’s effort to strengthen communication on long-term protocol development. Previously, the Foundation announced research on an “interoperability layer” to make Layer 2 ecosystems feel like a single chain, reorganized development teams, adjusted treasury management, and initiated a new rhythm of biannual hard forks. All these actions aim toward a systematic, forward-looking approach to evolving Ethereum from “scalable” to “sustainable.” For investors and ecosystem builders, understanding these underlying technical bottlenecks and solutions is more important than chasing short-term market sentiment, as they will ultimately determine whether the foundation of this decentralized financial infrastructure remains solid.