Vitalik Buterin Proposes Partially Stateless Nodes to Keep Ethereum Trustless as It Scales
Ethereum’s co-founder offers a path to preserve decentralisation and censorship resistance while easing technical demands on everyday users.
Ethereum’s steady march toward greater scalability has always walked a fine line between performance and decentralisation. Now, co-founder Vitalik Buterin has introduced a promising solution that could help the network grow without sacrificing its core principles.
In a post published on May 19, Buterin outlined a new kind of Ethereum node architecture called "partially stateless nodes." The design is intended to allow more users to run lightweight, privacy-friendly Ethereum nodes without needing to store or process the full blockchain state. This, in turn, could play a critical role in protecting the network from centralization risks that come with over-reliance on third-party infrastructure.
Scaling Without Compromise
As Ethereum prepares for future scaling upgrades and higher gas limits, the resource requirements for running a full node are expected to rise. Full nodes currently store and verify the complete state of the Ethereum network, something that has become increasingly difficult for everyday users due to storage, bandwidth, and hardware constraints.
Buterin’s proposal addresses this by allowing nodes to validate blocks without storing the full blockchain history or state. These partially stateless nodes would keep only a select subset of data, such as a user’s own wallet, key smart contracts, or frequently used DeFi applications. By tailoring the node to what matters most to the user, Ethereum becomes more accessible and resilient.
“A market structure dominated by a few RPC providers is one that will face strong pressure to deplatform or censor users,”
Buterin warned in his post, emphasising that easier node access is a safeguard against centralisation and censorship.
Why This Matters for Ethereum and Web3
The proposal arrives at a critical time. While Ethereum has made huge strides in performance through upgrades like The Merge and layer-2 scaling, the network still leans heavily on Remote Procedure Call (RPC) providers. These services, often invisible to end-users, enable crypto wallets and dApps to interact with Ethereum without running a node.
However, this setup carries significant trade-offs. A small number of large RPC providers; many of which are regulated entities and can potentially censor users or block access by geography. Some have already done so, according to Buterin.
The introduction of partially stateless nodes gives users a realistic alternative. By dramatically lowering the barrier to operating a personal node, the design encourages more people to contribute to Ethereum’s decentralization without needing enterprise-grade hardware.
How Partially Stateless Nodes Work
The concept is simple, but technically powerful. Instead of requiring every node to store all data related to every smart contract, token, and address, partially stateless nodes allow users to select the specific segments of Ethereum’s state that they want to keep.
For example, a user might choose to store data only relevant to their wallet, stablecoin balances, favorite DeFi protocols, or NFTs. Everything outside of this subset would either fail to load or be accessed through a fallback RPC connection.
This means users retain direct, private, and censorship-resistant access to what matters most to them, while reducing the computing burden by orders of magnitude. It’s a middle ground between the robustness of full nodes and the convenience of lightweight wallets.
The nodes would still validate blocks statelessly, meaning they don’t rely on storing Merkle proofs or the entire blockchain history. They perform cryptographic verification based on the subset of data they maintain, giving users confidence in what they’re interacting with.
A Positive Step for the Broader Ethereum Ecosystem
The benefits of this architecture ripple far beyond individual users. Encouraging more people to run local nodes strengthens Ethereum’s security, decentralisation, and resilience to censorship or surveillance. It also aligns with the network’s long-standing ethos of permissionless participation.
As Ethereum continues to scale through rollups, sharding, and other efficiency-focused upgrades, partially stateless nodes offer a complementary solution that keeps the network inclusive and trustless at its foundation.
This isn't just a technical improvement. It’s a way of preserving the original social contract of Ethereum, where any user can verify and interact with the network directly, without reliance on corporate intermediaries.
The Bigger Picture for Crypto’s Future
Vitalik Buterin’s proposal speaks to a deeper challenge facing many blockchain networks: how to grow without replicating the same centralised structures that the space was meant to escape.
In recent years, convenience has pulled many users toward centralized apps, exchanges, and services. Wallets often default to RPC connections, and even Web3-native apps sometimes rely on centralised infrastructure for performance.
The rise of partially stateless nodes is a reminder that decentralization is not a fixed state, but something that must be maintained as a network evolves. By giving users better tools to run their own infrastructure, Ethereum is taking a tangible step toward a more equitable, censorship-resistant, and user-owned future.
It’s not yet clear when or how partially stateless nodes might be implemented across the Ethereum ecosystem, but Buterin’s proposal has already sparked strong interest from developers and researchers.
As Ethereum's scaling journey continues, solutions like these may prove essential—not just for performance, but for keeping the network aligned with its values.
In the long run, the success of Ethereum will be measured not only by how fast it becomes, but by how widely and independently it can be accessed. With proposals like this one, that future feels more achievable.
