Vitalik Buterin outlines ways to reduce Ethereum's bloat in 'Purge' upgrade roadmap

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined a possible roadmap tackling the Layer 1's complexity and "bloat" over time. 

Buterin wrote in an Oct. 26 post that a protocol's bloat primarily occurs through its increased features and historical data. Running an Etheruem node currently requires about 1.1 terabytes of disk space for the execution client, which connects to the Ethereum network and holds the database of its data, and hundreds more gigabytes of storage for the consensus client, which implements Etheruem's proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

He said reducing the need for every node to permanently store all history in addition to unneeded protocol features could achieve this goal of reduced bloat, titled "The Purge," while still preserving blockchain permanence. 

"If, by making node running more affordable, we can get to a network with 100,000 nodes, where each node stores a random 10% of the history, then each piece of data would get replicated 10,000 times — exactly the same replication factor as a 10,000-node network where each node stores everything," Buterin wrote.

He also offers up ways to effectively expire Ethereum's state, consisting of account balances, contract codes and contract storages, which could otherwise cause a client's storage requirements to grow. 

The Purge is the fifth installment in a series Buterin has written regarding Ethereum's future. Also in October, Buterin noted possible approaches to mitigate proof-of-stake centralization risks dubbed 'The Scourge" as well as "The Verge," which discusses minimizing the computational complexity of running an Ethereum node so that even a smartwatch can do it. 

"Figuring out this path for Ethereum in a more generalized way, and moving toward an eventual outcome that is stable for the long term, is the ultimate challenge of Ethereum's long term scalability, technical sustainability and even security," Buterin wrote regarding The Purge.