Vitalik Buterin proposes partially stateless nodes for Ethereum scaling

Buterin warns of the risks of centralized RPC providers and proposes a new node design to ensure trustless, censorship-resistant access to Ethereum as the network scales.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin unveiled a proposal to preserve trustless, censorship-resistant access to Ethereum, even as the network scales. 

On May 19, Buterin shared a post outlining how to make Ethereum’s layer-1 scaling “more friendly” to users running local nodes for personal use. The Ethereum co-founder highlighted the importance of independent users running nodes, saying that a market dominated by a few Remote Procedure Call (RPC) providers risks censorship. 

RPC providers let wallets, users and apps interact with the blockchain without running their own nodes. Crypto wallets are usually connected to an RPC provider behind the scenes. Buterin said there are risks to this setup. 

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