Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, wants to make Ethereum nodes easier for the average user to run by changing the way they synchronize with the network using regular consumer hardware.
Ethereum allows you to build nodes on any computer, run software, connect with others, and share and verify data across the network. Work together to validate transactions and maintain Ethereum security.
Having a full node is valuable as it means that users can maintain a local server that allows users to run Ethereum’s servers as if they were local, Buterin explained.
With a full node, users can read the chain in an unreliable, censorable and privacy-friendly way, and Buterin I wrote it Sunday on the Ethereum Research Blog.
But running a full node today means to store 1.3 terabytes According to Etherscan data. Without serious hardware or cloud resources, most people can’t do that, considering the cost.
“The overhead is practical right now and is likely to remain expensive even after many efficiency improvements,” Buterin said.
“Instead of storing all the blockchain data, nodes only maintain the required parts, but historical data for more than 36 days is distributed across multiple nodes in shared storage,” said Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research. Decryption.
“Think like a library system–Not all books from local branches are required if they can be requested by other libraries if necessary,” he added.
Local First, Wide Roadmap
Butaline in 2023 It was proposed It acknowledges that it could take more than a decade due to its long-term goal of being able to create a fully verified Ethereum node that can work with “regular consumer hardware” such as mobile phones.
Buterin’s new proposal introduces the local first model. The idea is simple. Rather than tracking the entire global state of Ethereum, you can only follow what is important to your users.
Instead of storing everything, pull out certain information as needed and make sure it’s correct.
This idea also fits into Ethereum’s broader roadmap. Pectra Upgradecalled the “most ambitious” update of the system.
For Buterin, relying on just a few dominant providers poses a risk of censorship.
If the Ethereum market is structured like this, he writes, “it faces strong pressure to exhaust or censor users.”
For these reasons, “it’s worth it to continue to make running personal nodes easier,” added Buterin.
The proposal “feels like a breath of fresh air,” said Michael Cameron, co-founder of a vanilla finance decentralized trading platform that operates within the telegram ecosystem. Decryption.
While Ethereum’s latest technology offers reliability and privacy, “computation overhead and metadata vulnerabilities” reveal the dangers of relying on several major players, Cameron explained.
However, there are still challenges to fully realize the concept.
Cameron added that “distributions are only successful if enough nodes participate to ensure data availability,” and that “the powerful mechanisms of state subset selection and fallback options can become complicated.”
Reflecting that sentiment, Yoon from Tiger Research states that increasing the number of nodes and geographically distributing “wires help networks escape the risk of centralization,” and “a thorough assessment” is needed to study how to apply it.
Still, “it’s a hill worth fighting for,” Cameron said.
edit Sebastian Sinclair
