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Ethereum 
$2,597 co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a new roadmap, EIP-4444, to accelerate Layer 1 (L1) scalability while keeping personal full node usage accessible. EIP-4444 aims to alleviate disk space pressure by limiting blockchain history stored per node to 36 days. By distributing scattered historical storage data among participants, it reinforces the principle that “Blockchain lives forever.” Rebalancing gas prices in favor of storage, along with transitioning to stateless validation in the medium term, will increase transaction volume and reduce synchronization costs. The most striking innovation of EIP-4444 is “partially stateless” nodes, which store only critical data. This allows users to achieve local RPC speed without compromising full privacy.
Roadmap for Preserving Nodes in Ethereum Layer 1
Fully implementing EIP-4444 in the Ethereum network limits the blockchain history of nodes to just 36 days while distributing persistent data in equal parts to the community. Strengthened by erasure coding techniques, this model allows data to be securely stored without relying on centralized service providers. Buterin’s proposed new gas policy aims to use block space more efficiently by making storage-focused transactions expensive and computation-focused transactions cheap.
Creating a new contract, writing data to empty storage, or sending cryptocurrency to an account with no balance for the first time will face significantly higher costs than today. This directs the network towards sustainable growth rather than unnecessary expansion.
The introduction of stateless validation in the medium term will eliminate the need for nodes to store status Merkle branches, roughly halving the data footprint. The validating part of the node can effortlessly analyze blocks with ZK-EVM proofs or undefined state proofs. There will be no need for external servers for validation, thereby lowering the entry barrier for new participants and supporting resilient competitive block production.
Innovations to Facilitate Personal Node Usage
“Partially stateless” nodes fully validate the Ethereum blockchain while storing only a subset of data chosen by the user. For instance, a content editor may prefer to keep all EOAs and commonly used ERC-20/721 contracts. Alternatively, a developer might opt for a lightweight set limited to addresses accessed within the last two years. This choice will be written into a configuration contract within the blockchain, where the node will only retain raw values, discarding Merkle branches. As a result, users can instantly pull frequently queried data privately and censor-free.
The privacy difference will be evident. Today, single-server PIR solutions remain expensive, and major RPC providers already block certain countries. A local node, however, offers complete transparency without sharing IP and query patterns with a third party. Furthermore, even if the gas limit increases by 10-100 times, the “partially stateless” model keeps desktop hardware in play. Thus, while the network scales, individual sovereignty is not compromised.
