Ethereum Foundation researchers warn of storage burden from ‘state bloat,’ propose paths to ease node bottleneck 

Ethereum Foundation researchers from the Stateless Consensus team are warning that the network's ever-expanding "state"—comprising accounts, contract storage, and bytecode—is creating a significant storage burden that threatens node decentralization and resilience. While scaling solutions accelerate state growth, if only sophisticated operators can afford to store the full state, Ethereum's core properties weaken. To address this, the team proposed three pathways: State Expiry, which removes inactive data from the active set; State Archive, which separates fast 'hot' state from historical 'cold' state; and Partial Statelessness, allowing nodes to store only subsets of the state. The immediate focus includes improving archive development and RPC infrastructure, inviting community participation to test and refine these forward-compatible proposals.

(Source：The Block)