Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, believes that the implementation of Verkle trees will bring significant benefits to Ethereum solo stakers and network nodes. In a recent post, Buterin highlighted the advantages of this technological upgrade to Ethereum’s protocol. Verkle trees are expected to enable “stateless validator clients,” allowing staking nodes to operate with minimal hard disk space and achieve near-instant synchronization.
Buterin had previously outlined a five-step process to bring Ethereum’s smart contract blockchain to its final stage of development. This process began with the activation of the Beacon Chain in September 2022, which marked Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
Verkle trees are part of the roadmap Buterin shared in late 2022, which outlines different development milestones using five keywords: Merge, Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge. Verkle trees fall under the Verge stage, where data storage and node size optimization are introduced. Buterin detailed the technical specifications of Verkle trees in the Ethereum Improvement Proposal documentation published in 2022.
Similar to Merkle trees, Verkle trees use tree-like structures but with a key difference: nodes utilize a specific type of hash called a vector commitment, which is passed to sub-nodes. This feature provides long-term benefits to the Ethereum network. Verkle trees enable smaller proof sizes that can fit within each block of the Ethereum blockchain, allowing nodes to verify blocks using the data contained in the block itself.
Implementing Verkle trees will bring various new functionalities, such as lower hardware requirements for running Ethereum nodes, which is expected to enhance network decentralization. Additionally, new nodes can join the network almost instantly and sync with the network quickly.
The development of Verkle trees is still ongoing, and integrating them into the Ethereum protocol will require several changes. This includes introducing a new data structure to store the network’s state, a new gas accounting model, a strategy for migrating Ethereum’s state from Merkle to Verkle trees, new cryptography primitives, and new fields at the block level.
In conclusion, the implementation of Verkle trees in Ethereum represents a significant step towards achieving statelessness and improving the efficiency and functionality of the network.