The Stateless Ethereum Book

What is Stateless Ethereum?

Stateless Ethereum is an update to the Ethereum protocol, in which blocks become self-contained units of execution. There is no longer a need to download the entire state of the Ethereum, all the required information is packaged inside the block.

Why is statelessness important?

Stateless Ethereum brings forth a lot of the scalability and usability features that the Ethereum community has been waiting for for a long time.

In pratical terms, this means:

  • reduced validator hardware requirements: IO, disk space, and computation.
  • as a result, a higher gas limit, since the lower gas limit was imposed by these hardware requirements.
  • faster sync times, as a node doesn’t need more than an EL block to join the network.
  • an easy implementation of state expiry, a feature that has eluded Ethereum since before 2018.
  • trustless light clients, that directly follow the chain without needing a third party to provide the state.
  • better decentralization, as it makes it possible to cheaply create private pools.

Main benefits

Statelessness in Ethereum brings significant benefits by addressing critical scalability and decentralization challenges.

Scalability

By removing the need for clients to store a great amount of data, validators can process more transactions per block, increasing the throughput. Thus, we enable:

  • higher TPS, since the IO bottleneck is the principal hindrance to increasing the gas limit.
  • no required synchronization, since all the data needed to execute a block is packaged with it.
  • reduced disk footprint, for non-block builders validators, wallets and simple nodes. In the case of verkle trees, block builders will also benefit from a reduced disk footprint.

Decentralization

By reducing the hardware requirements for validating nodes makes it feasible for more participants to run nodes on lightweight devices. This fosters decentralization by:

  • lowering entry barriers, where new roles with reduced hardware and monetary investments are created, for new actors to help secure some aspects of the network (see rainbow staking).
  • enabling users to create private staking pools, where hardware and monetary resources can be pooled collaboratively to participate in the network.
  • reducing the trust placed in centralized data providers, removing the need for lightweight clients to trust a centralized entity.

Innovative features

Statelessness also opens the door to innovative features, including:

  • state expiry, which limits the growth of historical state data.
  • rainbow staking, which enhances flexibility in staking mechanisms by creating many niches for low-stake nodes to participate in the network’s security.
  • secure light clients, which is the consequence of not having to trust a centralized authority when using the blockchain.

Ease of use

Additionally, by reducing the state proof size, statelessness facilitates more seamless cross-chain communication, laying the groundwork for improved interoperability between the Ethereum L1 and its L2s.

Purpose of this book

This book is designed to serve as a comprehensive resource for understanding and contributing to our work on Stateless Ethereum.

Goals of This Book

  • Explain the vision: Provide an in-depth explanation of the motivation behind Stateless Ethereum, including its potential impact on scalability and decentralization.
  • Technical guidance: Offer clear and detailed instructions for developers, researchers, and contributors to engage with and extend our work.
  • Knowledge sharing: Educate readers about various aspects of stateless block execution, and their role in achieving Stateless Ethereum.
  • Encourage collaboration: Foster a community of like-minded individuals by providing resources, tools, and best practices for collaborative development.

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for:

  • Developers: Interested in contributing to the implementation of Stateless Ethereum.
  • Researchers: Exploring the new designs enabled by Stateless Ethereum, and learning how client architecture is impacted by these choices.
  • Learners: Seeking to deepen their understanding of this major evolution of the Ethereum protocol.