Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 5: The Purge

Vitalik Buterin's Ethereum roadmap essay "The Purge" argues that Ethereum must reduce growing bloat and complexity while preserving the permanence that makes blockchains valuable. The article says a full-synced node needs roughly 1.1 terabytes of disk space, with about 800 GB of that being history, which grows by hundreds of gigabytes each year. It proposes distributing history storage across nodes, noting that a network of 100,000 nodes each storing a random 10% of history would replicate each piece of data 10,000 times. It also says state adds around 50 GB per year, and that state expiry must keep balances and contracts accessible to users who stay inactive.