The EVM CoreISSUE #11 of 48

statelessness · the verkle transition

SoliaVSThe Reentrancy Reaper

Solia saysStatelessness lets clients verify blocks using witnesses that come with the block — no state database — paving the way for ultra-light Ethereum nodes once verkle trees ship.

Today every full node stores all of Ethereum's state — about 100 GB and growing. Statelessness turns that on its head: blocks carry witnesses (proofs of the state cells they touch), and verifiers check the block against the witnesses without needing the state. The current Merkle-Patricia trie makes witnesses too big to ship inline; verkle trees (bc-102) shrink them enough.

The payoff is a node that boots in minutes from any peer, holds kilobytes of RAM, and validates without a database. The trade-off is bandwidth: every block now carries hundreds of KB of witness data. The demo compares stateful storage to stateless witness traffic over a year.

Power-ups you unlock

Stateless clients verify blocks using witnesses instead of a state DB
Verkle trees are required to make witnesses small enough to ship inline
Storage is replaced by per-block witness bandwidth
Enables ultra-light, instantly-bootable nodes
On the Ethereum roadmap (the "Verge")

The Reentrancy Reaper attacks — common mistakes

Confusing statelessness with stateless transactions (different concept)
Underestimating the witness bandwidth that replaces storage
Assuming statelessness ships in the next hard fork (verkle migration first)
Forgetting block producers still need full state

Boss battleCompare stateful node storage (~100 GB growing) to stateless witness traffic per year and compute the trade-off.

Example code

<!doctype html><html><head><meta charset="utf-8"></head>
<body style="background:#06040d;color:#e6e0ff;font-family:monospace;padding:20px"><pre id="o"></pre>
<script>
const STATE_KEYS = 250000000;
const FULL_NODE_STATE_GB = 100;
const VERKLE_WITNESS_KB = 0.5;
const ACCESSES_PER_BLOCK = 1000;
const witnessPerBlockKB = ACCESSES_PER_BLOCK * VERKLE_WITNESS_KB;
const blocksPerYear = (365 * 24 * 3600) / 12;
const witnessPerYearGB = (witnessPerBlockKB / (1024*1024)) * blocksPerYear;
document.getElementById('o').textContent = [
  'STATEFUL clients store full state:',
  '  ~' + STATE_KEYS.toLocaleString() + ' state keys',
  '  ~' + FULL_NODE_STATE_GB + ' GB on disk, growing every block',
  '',
  'STATELESS clients verify with witnesses (no state DB):',
  '  per-block witness:  ' + witnessPerBlockKB.toFixed(0) + ' KB (' + ACCESSES_PER_BLOCK + ' accesses × ' + VERKLE_WITNESS_KB + ' KB)',
  '  per-year bandwidth: ~' + witnessPerYearGB.toFixed(1) + ' GB (disk stays flat)',
  '',
  'verkle trees make this feasible: small witnesses + bundled openings'
].join('\n');
</script></body></html>

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