Warnings have been issued by Buterin regarding the potential dangers posed by centralized RPC providers, and a redesigned node structure has been proposed by him to guarantee trustless and censorship-resistant access to Ethereum as the network undergoes scaling.
A proposal was unveiled by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin aimed at maintaining trustless and censorship-resistant access to the Ethereum network as it continues to scale.
A post was shared by Vitalik Buterin on May 19, detailing methods to make Ethereum’s layer-1 scaling “more user-friendly” for individuals operating local nodes. The Ethereum co-founder emphasized the critical role of independent users maintaining their own nodes, warning that reliance on a limited number of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) providers could lead to censorship risks.
Interaction with the blockchain by wallets, users, and applications is enabled through RPC providers without the need to operate personal nodes. Typically, crypto wallets are connected to an RPC provider in the background. According to Buterin, this arrangement carries certain risks.
It was written by Buterin that a market structure controlled predominantly by a small number of RPC providers would be subject to significant pressure to censor or deplatform users. He noted that numerous RPC providers have already restricted access to users from entire countries.
Vitalik Buterin Introduces Concept of Partially Stateless Nodes
Alongside concerns about censorship, it was argued by Buterin that factors such as the high cost of fully trustless cryptographic solutions and issues surrounding metadata privacy highlight the importance of making it easier for individuals to operate personal nodes.
In the proposal, a new concept referred to as “partially stateless nodes” was introduced by Buterin as a solution. These nodes are intended to provide users with privacy-preserving access to blockchain data while avoiding the significant resource requirements associated with operating a full node.
As Ethereum undergoes scaling and the gas limit rises, greater storage capacity and bandwidth are required to operate a full node. According to Buterin, this challenge is addressed through the use of partially stateless nodes, which enable users to validate the blockchain and provide local data access while retaining only a portion of the Ethereum state tailored to their specific needs.
Introducing a New Node Type for Stateless Block Validation
The operation of the nodes would be carried out through stateless block validation, meaning that the full Merkle proofs or the entire blockchain history would not need to be stored. Instead, selected portions of the state could be maintained and updated as needed.
This implies that nodes could be configured by users to retain only the data relevant to their own accounts, preferred decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, and frequently used tokens such as stablecoins and Ether.
The remaining data would be excluded, and any queries extending beyond the stored subset would either fail or be redirected through an RPC-based solution.
