TechFlow News: On May 18, Vitalik Buterin posted on X addressing the Ethereum state storage optimization proposal raised by the community—“users store data themselves, while only hashes and proofs are stored on-chain.” Vitalik pointed out its fundamental limitation: the data required to verify proofs still needs to be stored and continuously updated, and its volume is comparable to the current state data—thus it does not meaningfully reduce the burden. He noted that although viable solutions exist, they all involve multiple complex components and require varying degrees of trade-offs relative to Ethereum’s current design.
Previously, this community discussion emerged in the context of EIP-8037—a proposal aiming to curb state growth by significantly increasing the initial gas costs for new contracts, accounts, and storage slots. However, this approach is widely viewed as addressing only the symptoms, not the root cause. Currently, alternative proposals—including encrypted sharding, off-chain stateless contracts, and periodic blockchain pruning—are still under active discussion within the community, with no consensus yet reached.
