Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum and Bitcoin developer on August 16, credited Bitcoin developers for their work on Utreexo. He also described a scaling proposal that would combine UTXO style state with conventional dynamic state as well as models in between.
You can read more about it here:
- Vitalik Buterin acknowledged Bitcoin’s developers and Utreexo, while presenting Ethereum’s proposed hybrid-state scaling strategy.
- Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter proposed native UTXOs that could cut payment state usage roughly 99.8%.
- The proposal retains Ethereum accounts but shifts simple, one-time payments into a UTXO style model.
- EIP-8141 Frame Transactions, required by the UTXO design, is currently only considered for Hegotá inclusion.
- Vitalik’s recursive STARK mempool propose limits the proof bandwidth overhead instead of proving an unlimited Ethereum transaction throughput.
In a X postButerin called it a “current proposed Ethereum scaling strategy,” It is important to make it known that the architectural design remains in development.
Buterin stated that the aim is to scale most Ethereum activities much more without having to sacrifice decentralization or censorship resistance, nor ease of operating nodes. Buterin’s comments don’t mean Ethereum is replacing its account model by Bitcoin’s UTXO architectural. These designs are still research ideas and not protocol modifications.
Bitcoin’s Utreexo is a good model to reduce node state
Thaddeus Drija, a researcher with the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, introduced Utreexo to the world in 2019. The new design allows a validated node to represent the Bitcoin UTXOs with a compact, hash-based accumulator. The inclusion proofs of transaction inputs allow the nodes to validate relevant outputs using that accumulator.
MIT DCI original paper Says the accumulator increases logarithmically as the base set. It addresses the broad problem Ethereum researchers examine: Increasing network activity without forcing storage requirements to grow at the exact same pace. Utreexo will remain a Bitcoin project and not something that Ethereum directly copies.
Ethereum native UTXO proposals targets the payment state
Ethereum July 6 Research proposal from Toni Wahrstätter, writing as Nero_eth, proposes adding native UTXO-like payments without removing Ethereum accounts. This model is designed for one-time payments without the need to maintain a persistent state of smart contracts.
This proposal states that the workloads would reduce permanent-state usage by 99.8%. Ethereum will not store the entire payment object as active state but instead prove it’s existence by retaining only a small spent status bit. For one billion transactions, the proposal suggests roughly 300 MB permanent state. This compares to about 100 GB – 150 GB of storage for similar account or storage entries. This is a design estimate, and mainnet results are not yet measured.
This approach is in line with Ethereum’s efforts to reduce the verification and storage burdens. As Crypto.news has previously reported. Ethereum’s Lean rebuild places recursive cryptographic proofs at the center of its proposed verification overhaul.
Recursive STARKs solve a different scaling bottleneck
Buterin’s January recursive STARK memory pool research The proof bandwidth issue is tackled. The model uses highly optimized STARK-proofs of 128 kB, and suggests that the mempool nodes combine valid proofs recursively rather than attaching a large proof for each object propagated.
The extra bandwidth per node would be about 2MB/second using Buterin’s eight peers with 500 millisecond intervals. This will remain the same as new objects are added to the scheme. Researchers are exploring the potential complementarity of native UTXO and mempool technology.
The combination of the two was extrapolated into a structure that could settle an issue. “unbounded volume” UTXO transitions using a compact proof. It isn’t a roadmap target, or a throughput goal for Ethereum. Buterin’s work does not prove an unlimited capacity for transactions, nor is the figure of 128 kB a commitment to a future Ethereum block format. It describes STARK-proof size assumed in Buterin’s mempool, but not if it was formally confirmed.
Next steps for Ethereum scaling
EIP-8141 or Frame Transactions is the preferred design for spending in native UTXO. EIP-8141 will introduce transaction frames that cover validation, payment and execution. The official Hegotá specification Currently, Frame Transactions is the only option listed. “Considered for Inclusion.” FOCIL, or EIP-7805, remains the only proposal formally scheduled for Hegotá.
Ethereum, the official cryptocurrency roadmap places Hegotá in 2027, after Glamsterdam in the fourth quarter of 2026. Native UTXOs are not currently listed as a scheduled Hegotá feature. As crypto.news reported, Hegotá’s 2027 upgrade scope is still being narrowedFrame Transactions is one of the most important designs that are still being considered.
Buterin’s Utreexo references therefore signal a research path rather than a outdated Ethereum upgrade. It points towards a hybrid system where different activities could be based on different state models while cryptographic verifications would reduce what nodes have to store and repeatedly verify.
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Source: crypto.news

