ETH Price Forecast: Ethereum Foundation proposes solutions ahead of the growing "state" pressure

The Stateless Consensus research team of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) states that the network’s “state” (status) of Ethereum has significantly expanded over the past year, following a series of upgrades aimed at improving scalability. In a blog post published on Tuesday, the Ethereum Foundation warns that uncontrolled growth of the state could have long-term consequences, including risks of centralization, increased censorship, and weakened network scalability.

The “state” includes all core data that enables Ethereum to operate, from account information, storage data of smart contracts, to bytecode. This is the foundational layer supporting nearly all activities within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Wallets rely on the state to display balances and transaction history; decentralized applications (dApp) continuously query the state to determine existing positions, orders, or messages; meanwhile, infrastructure providers such as block explorers or bridges must constantly read the state to maintain services for users.

The Ethereum Foundation emphasizes that if the state becomes too large, too centralized, or too complex to serve, the entire ecosystem will face negative consequences: increased operational costs, greater fragility, and significantly more difficult decentralization.

A core issue is that Ethereum’s state only grows—never shrinks—expanding continuously. Each new account, each data write to storage, or each added bytecode creates data that the network must store permanently. This ongoing accumulation translates into actual operational costs that validators and full nodes must bear increasingly.

According to estimates by the research team, about 80% of Ethereum’s state has not been accessed for over a year, yet nodes are still required to store this entire data set. Not only Ethereum, but many other blockchains are facing similar challenges: the ever-growing state makes running full nodes impractical for average users, pushing storage and serving responsibilities into the hands of a few large infrastructure providers.

The Ethereum Foundation expresses concern that if only well-funded organizations can run full nodes, Ethereum’s censorship resistance and trustless neutrality could be undermined. Although mechanisms like FOCIL or VOPS are designed to maintain censorship resistance even when using specialized builders, their effectiveness still depends on a healthy ecosystem of nodes—where the state can be accessed, stored, and served in a decentralized manner at reasonable costs.

How to address the increasingly bloated state?

To tackle these escalating challenges, the Stateless Consensus team proposes three complementary approaches: state expiry (state expiration), state archive (state storage), and partial statelessness (partial statelessness).

State expiry allows temporarily removing unused states from the active state set, while still enabling their recovery through cryptographic proofs when needed. The team highlights two main implementation models:

Both approaches aim to keep the active state size minimal by temporarily removing parts that are not frequently accessed.

State archive focuses on separating “hot” and “cold” states. Data that is accessed continuously will be stored in a fast, compact, and limited form, while older data will be moved to archival storage for historical verification. This approach helps maintain node performance over time, rather than degrading as the blockchain expands and ages.

Meanwhile, partial statelessness allows nodes to store only a portion of the state instead of the entire set. Wallets and light clients will proactively cache necessary data for their operation, reducing dependence on centralized RPC providers. This model not only significantly cuts storage costs but also lowers technical barriers, enabling individuals and small operators to participate more easily in node operation.

The Ethereum Foundation states they are prioritizing solutions that can deliver practical short-term benefits while remaining compatible with long-term, more ambitious protocol changes. Current focuses include upgrading tools for archive nodes, strengthening RPC infrastructure, and simplifying the operation of partial stateless nodes.

The team emphasizes that these are initial proposals and do not represent a consensus view of the entire organization. As Ethereum is an open protocol, development is always accompanied by diverse opinions. Developers, node operators, and infrastructure teams are encouraged to participate in testing, providing feedback, and contributing ideas for this direction.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH rebounds to support symmetrical triangle model

On Friday’s trading session, ETH failed to break above the 20-day (EMA) moving average, was rejected, and temporarily slipped below the lower edge of a key symmetrical triangle pattern.

However, buying pressure quickly re-emerged, helping ETH recover back to the support line of this pattern. To confirm a bullish scenario, the largest altcoin in the market needs to decisively break above the upper edge of the triangle—converging with the 50-day EMA—before aiming to test the critical resistance at $3,470. In the short term, the key condition remains ETH’s successful breakout above the 20-day EMA.

Daily ETH/USDT chart | Source: TradingView Conversely, if selling pressure increases and causes the price to break below the triangle’s lower edge, ETH is likely to retreat to a lower support zone around $2,620.

From a technical perspective, the RSI indicator remains below the neutral threshold, while the Stochastic Oscillator continues to oscillate in oversold territory, indicating that bearish momentum still dominates the market.