Vitalik Buterin Introduces New Node Type to Balance Ethereum Scaling with Decentralization

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has introduced a refined vision for Ethereum's scaling strategy—one that balances aggressive L1 gas limit increases

In a recent blog post, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has proposed a modified vision for the cryptocurrency’s scaling strategy. This vision, which Buterin describes as "a local-node-favoring delta to the scaling roadmap," takes into account feedback and aims to balance the aggressive increases in L1 gas limit with the importance of decentralization and self-sovereignty for individual node operators.

The post, titled "A Material Local Node Point Of View," focuses on a set of technical adjustments that can be made to ensure users can still run useful, privacy-preserving local nodes even as the network scales up.

The Importance of Local Nodes

Traditionally, a full node's role has been to validate the chain, ultimately ensuring trustlessness. With the introduction of ZK-EVMs, many have assumed this function will be sufficient, minimizing the need for individuals to run full nodes.

However, Buterin highlights a second critical use case: enabling local, trustless, and censorship-resistant access to ETH data through personal RPC endpoints. While zero-knowledge proofs and private information retrieval (PIR) protocols can address verification and privacy concerns when using third-party RPC services, Buterin points out key limitations:

* **Cost Inefficiencies:** Fully cryptographic approaches for private information retrieval are likely to be very costly, especially for large data sets like the Ethereum state.

* **Metadata Privacy Leaks:** Even with PIR, there's a risk of leaking metadata, such as the type of data being requested, which could be used to infer personal information.

* **Centralization Risks:** Relying on a small number of third-party RPC providers creates a point of centralization, which could lead to censorship or downtime.

These vulnerabilities, Buterin argues, ultimately necessitate the continued use of running personal nodes.

A New Node Paradigm: Partially Stateless Nodes

To balance the advantages of statelessness with the need for local data access, Buterin proposes a new kind of node configuration: the partially stateless node.

This node would verify the blockchain statelessly, using methods like ZK-EVM or classic validation, but also maintain a configurable subset of the Ethereum state. This configuration would allow the node to fulfill RPC queries for relevant data, preserving privacy and autonomy.

Users could configure which parts of the state to store based on their needs—such as frequently used wallets, specific ERC-20/721 tokens, or smart contracts relevant to DeFi and privacy tools. This flexibility would give users complete control over their local access and data footprint.

Short- and Medium-Term Priorities

To support this vision, Buterin recommends the immediate acceleration of several roadmap items:

* **Increasing L1 gas limit to 100M units as soon as possible and continuing to increase it over time. This would allow for more complex computations and applications on L1.

* Deploying stateless verification as soon as possible to reduce the storage footprint of nodes.

In the medium term, the rollout of stateless verification would allow nodes to operate with even less storage by removing the need to hold Merkle branches. This change would further decrease the technical barrier to entry for new node operators.

Local Autonomy in a Scaled Ethereum

Buterin's adjusted roadmap shows a strong preference for preserving local node usability in the face of L1 scaling. This vision seems to present a valuable compromise.

With Buterin's proposals, Ethereum could grow 10–100x in block capacity without forcing users into centralized data dependencies or compromising on trustlessness and privacy. The partially stateless node, if widely adopted, could become a cornerstone of this balance—empowering users with high-efficiency, low-footprint tools to remain sovereign participants in the ecosystem.