Buterin introduces the concept of The Purge to reduce the size and complexity of Ethereum

What’s new? Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has introduced The Purge, a concept aimed at reducing the complexity and size of the underlying blockchain. The Purge is presented as part of the project’s roadmap and as part of Buterin’s series of articles on the possible future of the protocol.

Buterin’s blog

What else is known? In the article, Buterin highlighted two major problems with Ethereum: the growing amount of historical data over time and code complexity (it is much easier to add a new function than to remove an old one).

The developer notes that running an Ethereum node currently requires about 1,1 TB of disk space for the execution client, which connects to the network and stores the database. As for the consensus client, it also requires several hundred GB.

Buterin proposed the concept of The Purge to address the problem of network “bloat”. This goal would be achieved by reducing the need for each node to permanently store the full history of the blockchain and its no longer relevant functions.

To make the operation of nodes more affordable, it is proposed that only a fraction of the network’s total history be allocated to each storage, with the data chunk to be randomly selected, and the percentage can vary depending on the number of validators.

“For Ethereum to sustain itself into the long term, we need a strong counter-pressure against both of these trends, reducing complexity and bloat over time. But at the same time, we need to preserve one of the key properties that make blockchains great: their permanence.

You can put an NFT, a love note in transaction calldata, or a smart contract containing a million dollars onchain, go into a cave for ten years, come out and find it still there waiting for you to read and interact with.

For dapps to feel comfortable going fully decentralized and removing their upgrade keys, they need to be confident that their dependencies are not going to upgrade in a way that breaks them,” the developer states.

Earlier this month, Buterin proposed the concepts of The Scourge and The Verge. The former aims to reduce the risks of centralization. At the same time, the latter proposes to minimize the complexity of managing the Ethereum node so that it can be run even on a smartwatch.