New Ethereum Proposal Wants to Make Running a Node Easier, Cheaper

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wants to make it easier for average users to run Ethereum nodes by changing how they sync with the network, using regular consumer hardware.

On Ethereum, a node can be built on any computer able to run its software and connect with others to share and verify data across the network. Working together, they validate transactions and maintain Ethereum’s security.

Having a full node is valuable as it means a user can maintain a local server that could run Ethereum’s server as if they were local, Buterin explained.

With a full node, users can “read the chain in a trustless, censorship-resistant, and privacy-friendly way,”  Buterin wrote Sunday in the Ethereum Research blog.

But running a full node today means storing over 1.3 terabytes of data, according to data from Etherscan. Without serious hardware or cloud resources, most people can’t do it, given the costs.

“Currently, the overhead is impractically high, and even after many efficiency improvements, it is likely to stay expensive,” Buterin noted.

“Instead of storing all blockchain data, nodes would only keep the portions they need, while historical data older than 36 days gets distributed across multiple nodes for shared storage,” Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt.

“Think of it like a library system – you don’t need every book in your local branch if you can request them from other libraries when needed,” he added.

Local-first, broader roadmap

In 2023, Buterin advocated for a long-term goal of making fully verified Ethereum nodes operable on “regular consumer hardware” such as mobile phones, though he admits it could take a decade or more.

Buterin’s new proposal introduces a local-first model. The idea is simple: let nodes follow only what matters to the user, instead of tracking Ethereum’s entire global state.

Instead of storing everything, they would pull up specific info when needed and check that it’s correct.

The idea also fits into Ethereum’s broader roadmap, which is now being laid down with the first phase of the Pectra upgrade, dubbed the “most ambitious” update to its system yet.

For Buterin, relying on just a few dominant providers creates a risk of censorship.

If Ethereum’s market is structured this way, it will “face strong pressure to deplatform or censor users,” he wrote.

For those reasons, “there is value in continuing to ensure greater ease of running a personal node,” Buterin added.

The proposal “feels like a breath of fresh air,” Michael Cameron, co-founder of Vanilla Finance decentralized trading platform that operates within the Telegram ecosystem, told Decrypt.

While the latest technologies on Ethereum offer trustlessness and privacy, “their computational overhead and metadata vulnerabilities” expose the dangers of relying on just a few big players, Cameron explained.

However, challenges to fully realizing that concept remain.

It would require “strong mechanisms for state subset selection and fallback options, which could add complexity,” Cameron said, adding that distributing storage would only succeed “if enough nodes participate to ensure data availability.”

Echoing that sentiment, Tiger Research’s Yoon said that while boosting the number of nodes and distributing them geographically “would help the network escape centralization risks,” studying how to apply it would need “thorough evaluation.”

Still, “that’s a hill worth fighting for,” Cameron said.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair