Ethereum is exploring solutions to curb state bloat and alleviate nodes.

• State bloating puts pressure on Ethereum node costs.
• Foundation proposes expiration and partial storage of state.
• Scalability can affect network decentralization.

Ethereum Foundation Researchers warned This is due to the increasing bloating of the network, a phenomenon that has been continuously raising the storage and operational requirements of the nodes. The accelerated growth in data volume is now seen as a structural risk to the decentralization and resilience of Ethereum.

Ethereum's state brings together all the active information on the network, including account balances, smart contract data, and the bytecode that underpins thousands of applications. According to the foundation, this foundation has become essential for an infrastructure that today "settles billions of dollars in value," but it carries a central challenge: the state grows permanently, without natural mechanisms for reduction.

With this accumulation, operating a complete node tends to become more expensive and technically fragile. In a recent publication, the team highlighted that

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"If the state becomes too large, too centralized, or too difficult to manage, all these layers become more fragile, more expensive, and more difficult to decentralize."

Advances such as Layer 2 expansion, EIP-4844, and gas limit adjustments have increased network capacity, but have also accelerated this growth.

The researchers state that they are conducting stress tests to identify when "state growth becomes a scalability bottleneck," when "state size makes it difficult for nodes to keep up with the chain leader," and when "client implementations begin to fail under extreme state sizes."

In the long-term roadmap, stateless validation emerges as an alternative to reduce the load on validators. However, this model shifts the storage of historical data to specialized operators. In such a scenario,

"Most of the state will likely be stored only by: block builders, RPC providers, and other specialized operators such as SEM seekers and block explorers."

the researchers pointed this out, raising concerns about centralization.

To address the problem, the Stateless Consensus team presented three approaches. State Expiration proposes removing inactive data from the active dataset, with the possibility of reactivation upon proof. The foundation estimates that “80% of the state has not been altered for more than a year.” State Archive separates active and historical data, maintaining more stable node performance over time. Partial Statelessness would allow nodes to store only parts of the state, reducing costs and increasing participation.

In all proposals, the objective is

"Reduce the state as a performance bottleneck, lower the cost of maintaining it, and facilitate its provision."

The Ethereum Foundation stated that it prioritizes practical solutions in the short term, while also preparing more profound changes for the future of the protocol.