After so many lessons, I believe everyone has started to feel something: the more advanced something is, the more foundational it is within the system. It’s just like mathematics—the most basic math is often the “king” of difficulty.
Today’s topic is exactly like that. We’re going back to a fundamental question: in a blockchain system, how do nodes verify transactions?
In the traditional model, the answer is actually very simple: nodes need to store the full state, which means:
All account balances
All contract states
All historical changes
All of this must be stored in order to verify new transactions. But the problem is also very obvious—the state keeps getting larger. Especially in terms of data pressure, as data continuously accumulates over time, storage pressure keeps increasing. The most direct consequence is: the cost for new nodes to join keeps getting higher.
So the industry began exploring the Stateless Verification Model, which is exactly today’s topic.
A simple definition first
Stateless Verification means that when nodes verify transactions, they do not need to locally store the full state, but instead verify using externally provided data.
There is only one core change: from “store it yourself” to “fetch it when needed.”
The traditional problem: nodes must store the full state
1. High storage pressure
As on-chain applications increase, the state keeps expanding. This causes node costs to rise continuously, especially for full nodes that must maintain account data, contract storage, and historical transaction records.
Taking Ethereum as an example, as of 2024, its full node state data has exceeded hundreds of GB and is still growing at several GB per month. This means that running a full node has evolved from requiring a few hundred-dollar server to potentially needing tens of thousands of dollars in professional storage hardware—something ordinary users can hardly afford.
The transmission effect of this storage pressure is very obvious. When node operation costs become too high, the number of full nodes in the network will inevitably shrink, leaving only a few institutions or mining pools capable of maintaining them.
More importantly, the storage bottleneck also limits geographic distribution. Participants from developing regions are excluded from network consensus due to infrastructure limitations, further increasing centralization risk.
The Stateless Verification Model is precisely a structural solution proposed to address this pain point.
2. Long synchronization time
New nodes need to download all historical data. This significantly raises the entry barrier, especially after the network has been running for years and data has accumulated to massive levels.
For example, as of 2024, Bitcoin’s blockchain size has exceeded 500GB. Ethereum, due to more complex smart contract state data, requires even more—reaching the TB level for full synchronization.
A new node completing full synchronization not only consumes massive storage resources but may also take weeks or even months.
This long synchronization process creates multiple negative effects and accumulates technical debt. As the blockchain continues to operate, historical data will only grow, and synchronization time will worsen linearly or even exponentially.
What takes weeks today could become months in the future.
If this trend is not addressed, it will eventually lead to a complete halt in new node participation—no one is willing to invest in expensive hardware and endure a long period without returns for an uncertain outcome.
3. Impact on decentralization
If only a few nodes can afford the cost, the network becomes more centralized. This directly conflicts with the core vision of blockchain decentralization—a network controlled by only a few nodes significantly weakens censorship resistance and security.
This centralization trend can worsen across multiple dimensions:
Geographic distribution of nodes becomes highly uneven
The identity structure of node operators fundamentally changes
Loss of client software diversity
Ultimately, this hollowing out of decentralization undermines the core value proposition of blockchain.
When users realize that transaction finality depends on a few unidentified entities, when developers see that smart contracts can only be fully audited by a handful of machines, and when regulators discover that influencing a few custodians can affect the entire network—the distinction between blockchain and centralized databases essentially disappears.
The core idea of Stateless Verification is actually very simple
The core idea is simple: verification does not rely on locally stored full state. The key to achieving this is to provide the necessary data for verification together with the transaction.
A simple way to understand it:
Traditional approach: I have the data locally, so I can verify
Stateless approach: You bring the data, and I verify
The key mechanism: State Proof
To truly achieve this, a critical mechanism is required: State Proof.
State Proof can be understood as using a piece of data to prove that a certain state is correct. For example:
What is the balance of an account
What is a certain storage value
Nodes do not need to store this information themselves—as long as there is proof, they can verify it.
Advantages of Stateless Verification
Lower node cost: nodes do not need to store the entire state, reducing hardware requirements
Improved scalability: more people can run nodes, making the network more distributed
Faster startup: new nodes do not need to synchronize full history and can join quickly
Challenges in implementation
Although the idea is clear, implementation is not simple:
Dependence on external data: nodes rely on externally provided data, so data trustworthiness must be ensured
Proof size issue: state proofs themselves occupy space; if too large, they reduce efficiency
Data availability: if data cannot be accessed, verification becomes impossible
Relationship with modular architecture
Stateless verification often appears together with modular design. For example:
Execution layer handles processing
Data layer handles storage
Verification nodes only handle verification
Three-minute recap
Traditional model: store data locally, then verify
Stateless model: verify using proofs
Core goal: reduce cost and improve scalability
Conclusion
The development of blockchain has always been solving one question: how to allow more people to participate in verification. Stateless Verification is one important direction.
It does not make the system simpler—it makes nodes lighter.
When verification becomes easier, the network finally has a real chance to achieve true decentralization.
