Vitalik Buterin is once again raising a fundamental question about Ethereum's architecture. This time, the co-founder of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has publicly supported the idea of revising the system for simple payments, proposing to adopt a model that Bitcoin has been using since 2009. In his recent activity on social network X, he directly thanked Bitcoin developers for the hint.
The problem Buterin is trying to solve has been brewing for years. Every new account on the Ethereum network is permanently added data to the distributed ledger. Thousands of nodes worldwide store a full copy of the blockchain, including all accounts ever created. One such account takes up 100 to 150 bytes and remains in the system forever, even if no one uses it anymore. This "weighting" of the network has long been a stumbling block for scalability.
A Solution from 2009
The key to the puzzle, according to Buterin, lies in the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) model used in Bitcoin. Instead of storing aggregate balances, the system tracks each specific "coin." After a coin is spent, only about a third of a byte of data remains in the system—the so-called "unspent output." The difference at scale is colossal: a billion accounts in Ethereum would take up to 150 GB, while a billion spent coins would take roughly 300 MB.
Buterin is not just theorizing. Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter proposed a concrete solution based on this model back in July. On top of that, in January Buterin announced an enhancement: allowing computers to bundle many transaction verifications into a single compact package using STARK technology—cryptographic proofs that confirm data without full access to it.
Criticism and Context
However, not everyone greeted this initiative with enthusiasm. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson accused Ethereum of copying coin-tracking methods from his own network, calling it borrowing. Nevertheless, a developer under the pseudonym conall.gwei combined both ideas: the creator of the next block could publish a single aggregated file of 128 KB and process a huge number of payments at once. Buterin directly supported this approach.
The Utreexo project, which Buterin references, allows verifying coins without storing the full list of addresses. The idea is that in Ethereum both approaches would work simultaneously: most operations scale, and anyone can run their own node. These developments form the basis of the "Lean Ethereum" roadmap, which sparked debate over timelines back in July.
The market is not yet reacting to the scientific advances. ETH is trading around $1903, up 1.28% over the day, but has been unable to break the $2000 mark for several weeks. None of the proposed launch dates have been confirmed yet, and the question remains open—whether Ethereum developer teams will take on both solutions.
My analysis: The transition to a UTXO-like model is not just a technical improvement but a shift in data storage philosophy that could dramatically lower the barrier to entry for running a full node. However, given the inertia and complexity of the existing ecosystem, implementing such changes will require not only technical will but also consensus from the entire community, which in current market conditions looks unlikely in the short term.