BlockBeats news, on May 19, Vitalik published a post on the ethresear forum discussing how to reduce the difficulty of running local nodes (especially those run by individual users) while scaling the Ethereum main chain (Layer 1, L1) to maintain decentralization and user privacy.
The article proposes a multi-tiered strategy aimed at reducing the resource requirements for running Ethereum local nodes through short-term (EIP-4444, distributed storage, gas pricing adjustments), medium-term (stateless verification), and long-term (partially stateless nodes) measures. This not only helps L1 scaling but also maintains Ethereum's decentralization and user privacy, avoiding over-reliance on centralized RPC providers or costly cryptographic solutions.
The article also proposed a new type of node model: Partially Stateless Nodes. These nodes verify blocks through stateless verification and validate the entire chain (using stateless verification or ZK-EVM), but only store a portion of the state that users care about. The nodes can respond to RPC requests involving this portion of the state, while other requests will fail (or users can choose whether to fall back to external cryptographic solutions).
