Vitalik Buterin proposes the "Ethereum super scalability" concept, and the state bloat problem may see a breakthrough

On February 6, news reports stated that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed the concept of “super scaling” in his latest research sharing, aiming to fundamentally address the ongoing rise in Ethereum’s state costs. He stated that Ethereum should achieve large-scale growth in the future while maintaining decentralization and verifiability, without raising node entry barriers due to data bloat.

The so-called “state” refers to all on-chain data that each node must store, including account balances, smart contracts, tokens, and NFT ownership information. As the number of users and applications increases, this data continues to accumulate, leading to rising hardware and maintenance costs for running nodes, which could weaken the network’s decentralization over the long term.

To alleviate this pressure, Buterin suggested introducing a new, cheaper, and more restrictive type of state specifically for storing personal assets such as ERC-20 tokens and NFTs. He proposed adopting a model similar to Bitcoin’s UTXO, using “spent/unspent” records to replace frequently updated account balances, thereby reducing reliance on permanent storage. This approach could enable Ethereum to achieve processing capacity improvements of up to a thousand times without significantly increasing the size of the state.

Another key point is “temporary state.” In the super scaling concept, some data would automatically expire after a set period, with user wallets responsible for storing ownership proofs. When recovery is needed, these can be re-verified through encrypted proofs. This mechanism shifts part of the storage responsibility to the user side, reducing the burden on the mainnet.

If this plan is gradually implemented, transaction fees and node operation costs on the Ethereum network are expected to decrease, and the participation threshold for ordinary users and small validators will also be lowered. For developers, this means greater design flexibility without excessive concern about state limitations. Although the proposal is still in the theoretical stage and may take several years to deploy, it clearly outlines a long-term direction for Ethereum to seek a balance between high performance and decentralization.