Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin Unveils Plans for System Simplification and Resource Load Reduction
Summary:
Ethereum's co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, unveiled plans for reducing the system's complexity and reducing the resource load on nodes through a process known as the Purge. This strategic phase will involve removing redundant and old network history and streamlining the network. Following the Dencun hard fork, Buterin shared that a newly-implemented Ethereum Improvement protocol has simplified the protocol and enhanced security. He also noted the future possibility of nodes pruning historical blocks older than a year and shared recent optimizations implemented in Ethereum's node software, Geth. Buterin concluded discussing the need for purging precompiled Ethereum contracts, addressing their decreasing demand and their contribution to consensus bugs.
Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, recently detailed on social media the future steps for reducing the complexity of the system and minimizing the resource load on nodes, through a process known as the Purge. The Purge is a crucial phase in Ethereum's transition, involving the discarding of surplus and outdated network history, thus progressively streamlining the network. This step not only minimizes historical data storage but also substantially decreases the disk space requirements for node operators and the Ethereum protocol's technical liability. Vitalik Buterin shared this in his Ethereum roadmap.
In his document, Buterin pointed out that the implementation of the Ethereum Improvement protocol (EIP)-6780 during the Dencun hard fork eradicated most of the "SELFDESTRUCT" code's functionalities, thereby simplifying the protocol by minimizing complexity and enhancing security guarantees. After the implementation of EIP-6780, the number of storage slots that can be modified in a single block is capped at around the gas limit divided by 5000. Buterin anticipates that a new EIP will soon completely abolish the SELFDESTRUCT.
Related to this, Buterin is devising a novel approach for decentralized Ethereum staking. He mentioned that the Purge will implement history expiration via EIP-4444 to restrict the accumulation of historical data. Consequently, nodes will have the ability to prune locally historical blocks older than a year. The historical data will be necessary only when a peer needs to sync with the head of the chain or when it is explicitly requested. Hence, fully synced nodes confirming new blocks won't need historical data older than 365 days. Buterin stated that EIP-4444 could significantly improve the decentralization of Ethereum nodes. He proposed that if each node stores a small percentage of history by default, we could maintain approximately the same number of copies of each piece of history across the network as currently exist.
Buterin also disclosed that Geth, an Ethereum node software, recently eradicated thousands of lines of code by discontinuing support for pre-merge (Proof of Work) networks. He highlighted that after Dencun, there will be an 18-day storage window for blobs, thereby reducing node data bandwidth to 50 GB. Buterin elaborated on the necessity of purging Ethereum's precompile contracts, which are employed to execute intricate cryptographic operations that cannot be performed within the Ethereum Virtual Machine. But, lately, their usage has waned and they have become a significant source of consensus bugs and a major roadblock for new EVM deployments.
Published At
4/1/2024 2:19:26 PM
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