- Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum can borrow Utreexo ideas to reduce state storage and improve network scalability.
- Native UTXOs could cut permanent Ethereum state usage by about 99.8% for simple payment activity.
- Recursive STARKs could reduce bandwidth demands, while native UTXOs remain a research proposal rather than a roadmap target.
Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum’s scaling research can draw from Bitcoin’s Utreexo, a system that reduces the need to store full blockchain state. In an Aug. 16 post, Buterin credited Bitcoin developers for pioneering related ideas and described Ethereum’s proposed approach as a mix of UTXO-style and dynamic state across different types of network activity.
Buterin Points to Utreexo for Ethereum Scaling
Buterin said Ethereum should support UTXO-style state, dynamic state and models between them. He said the approach could scale most Ethereum activity without sacrificing decentralization, node operation or censorship resistance.
Utreexo, proposed by Bitcoin developer Thaddeus Dryja in 2019, uses a compact cryptographic accumulator for Bitcoin’s UTXO set. Nodes can verify transaction outputs through inclusion proofs instead of storing the entire set locally.
That model addresses storage pressure, while Ethereum faces a broader state problem. Its account-based system also stores smart-contract balances, code and application data.
Ethereum Proposal Adds Native UTXOs
Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter proposed native UTXOs for simple payment activity. The proposal would keep Ethereum’s account model while adding UTXO-style payments for transactions needing little persistent state.
According to the proposal, native UTXOs could reduce permanent state usage by about 99.8%. It estimates roughly 300 MB for one billion entries, compared with 100 GB to 150 GB under equivalent account models.
However, the proposal remains a research design. It depends on EIP-8141, which introduces programmable transaction frames for validation, gas payments and execution.
Recursive STARKs Target Network Bandwidth
Buterin has also proposed recursive STARKs for the Ethereum mempool. His January research assumes proofs of about 128 kB and uses recursive aggregation to combine validity proofs.
The model targets bandwidth rather than permanent state storage. With eight peers and 500-millisecond aggregation intervals, Buterin estimated additional bandwidth at about 2 MB per second per node.
A community response suggested combining recursive STARKs with native UTXOs could support very large transaction volumes. However, that remains an extrapolation, not an Ethereum throughput target.
Ethereum’s roadmap lists Hegotá for 2027, after Glamsterdam in late 2026. Native UTXOs are not currently scheduled for Hegotá, while Frame Transactions remain under consideration.
