The news is shifting to the Ethereum protocol, concerning scalability, even if it’s not strictly related to the way transactions are verified. Yes, more problems are on the horizon for Ethereum, even if the transition to proof-of-stake were to go off without a hitch.
The problem? Hard disk space. Even with gas fees as high as they are today, the number of transactions is so large that the ledger is growing by the day – and within a few months, it could become unmanageable for most blocks. The good news is that there is a solution – and that the group is already proposing it to those concerned.
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Ethereum and ledger space: another scalability problem
Anyone using the Ethereum network today for practical transactions will already have noticed the impossibility of using it for transactions of low economic value. Fees are very high, due to the extreme congestion of a network that requires significant resources to validate a transaction.
In recent months, the focus has been on the move to PoS validation, which will take place in the next few months and which many, particularly those outside the protocol’s development, consider sufficient to address the scalability issue. However, Vitalik Buterin’s official Reddit account has thrown us for a loop, as the problem also lies in the increasing size of the ledger, which will soon only be able to be hosted by a few nodes. This question opens up two avenues: the first is that of a technical solution, the second (as Buterin himself has mentioned in the past) the need to continue relying on L2 protocols, such as Polygone Matic.
Protocols on which we at Criptovaluta.it also continue to operate – we have them in our investment portfolio – precisely because of this situation, which will be permanent in at least some respects.
There is a solution: let’s see how it works
Vitalik Buterin proposed what is in fact already being done by some experimental blockchains, namely to allow nodes to operate only with an ultimate portion of the ledger – for example, with the transactions of a single year. The rest of the ledger would remain searchable using external protocols such as The Graph or via the Portal network, which is an internal sub-protocol.
There are two solutions on the table for this. Either a one-off reset after the merger with Ethereum 2.0, or a periodic reset that would follow technical modalities already included in EIP 4444, which seems to be Buterin’s own preference. Either way, a solution must be found – and quickly. Layer 2s can continue to take advantage of this type of situation, which cannot be resolved by switching to PoS.
