Vitalik Buterin plans to boost Ethereum’s efficiency

Vitalik Buterin wants to make Ethereum more efficient by eliminating technical debt, streamlining the protocol, and decreasing data bloat ( known as “The Purge”). The Purge seeks to eliminate unnecessary data storage and outdated functionality to increase Ethereum’s efficiency while preserving “the permanence” of Ethereum

The Purge is not anticipated to affect Ethereum’s gas fees. The recommended changes could reduce operating costs and enhance network functionality. Addressing the major obstacle, new nodes encounter when attempting to join the Ethereum network increasing storage requirements—is a crucial component of The Purge.

According to ycharts statistics, a fully-synced Ethereum node presently needs more than 1.17 terabytes (TB) of storage, mostly because of previous data. Buterin’s essay also emphasized the network’s present state, exposing that any newly formed state data is permanently kept, leading to the state’s constant expansion.

The Purge also aims to lower client storage needs “by reducing or removing the need for every node” to preserve all history. Buterin’s Purge blog post follows The Verge’s launch, aimed to enhance the usability and security of running an Ethereum network node.

The Verge update uses “stateless verification,” which aims to minimize the hardware required for blockchain block verification without storing much data. This new verification method might “make fully verifying the chain so computationally affordable” and let any mobile wallet, or web wallet, use the network as a node.