Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of ethereum, shared insights on next steps in simplifying the protocol and easing the load on node resources, also known as “Purge.”
The Purge essentially aims to safeguard the protocol by optimizing data storage. At the same time, it also seeks to address design decisions that were made due to technological limitations in the past. The main goal is to simplify the protocol, eliminate technical obligations, and reduce network participation costs by eliminating outdated historical data.
The role of EIP-6780 in the purge
EIP-6780 is a crucial proposal before ethereum hits the Purge. It focuses on reducing the functionality of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode within the protocol. The proposal was implemented during the Dencun hard fork in a bid to simplify ethereum and improve its security guarantees.
buterin ethereum.org/@vbuterin/purge_2024_03_31#What-are-some-other-%E2%80%9Cpurges%E2%80%9D-that-are-happening” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener” data-wpel-link=”external”>stressed the importance of this process to eliminate unnecessary complexities and address technical debt. This is expected to not only simplify ethereum's functionality, but also resolve any accumulated technical issues. EIP-6780 serves as an example of this goal.
While Dencun also paved the way for blobs, Buterin is also considering another crucial proposal, EIP-4444, which seeks to prune historical data on clients older than a year. The ethereum co-founder highlighted the challenge of storing the ancient history of the second largest blockchain. While entities like block explorers can handle it, he suggests optimizing peer-to-peer protocols for storing and sharing this data, offering a viable solution.
“The ethereum blockchain is permanent, but requiring literally every node to store all data forever is a very “overkill” way to achieve that permanence.”
Other areas that deserve a “purge”
According to Buterin, reducing the amount of storage needed to run an ethereum node can greatly expand participation. Additionally, EIP-4444 reduces node synchronization time, streamlining workflows for operators and potentially improving ethereum's decentralization.
“Therefore, EIP-4444 can greatly increase the decentralization of ethereum nodes. “Potentially, if each node stores small percentages of history by default, we could even have approximately as many copies of each specific part of history stored on the network as we do today.”
Another aspect is pre-builds, some of which are very successful, but others are underused and found to be in lower demand than expected. These underused prebuilds cause consensus errors and difficulties for new EVM implementations. Buterin suggests two ways to address this problem: remove the precompilation and replace it with an EVM code segment that executes the same action.
Regarding LOG reform, Buterin suggests removing bloom filters and focusing solely on producing a hash state value. The plan includes utilizing ZK-SNARK and incrementally verifiable computing (IVC) to construct verified trunk trees.
Another aspect that deserves attention is the ongoing transition from ethereum to SimpleSerialize (SSZ). While ethereum's consensus layer has been moved to the “cleaner” and “efficient” SSZ, the same cannot be said for the execution layer, which must be moved to the same framework.
After the transition to SSZ, only two structures will remain: SHA256 binary trees and Verkle trees. Over time, as the SNARK hash improves, Buterin noted that both can be replaced by binary Merkle trees that use SNARK-compatible hashes, unifying ethereum data structures.
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