Unveiling the Blockchain Scalability Hierarchy According to Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, has outlined his views on blockchain scalability by creating a layered framework that identifies three main components with varying levels of difficulty. This approach provides in-depth insights into the technical challenges faced in building scalable blockchain systems. According to an explanation reported by Odaily, a structured understanding of scalability is key to designing effective and efficient solutions.

Three Levels of Scalability: From Computation to State

Vitalik Buterin classifies blockchain components into a hierarchy based on their scalability difficulty. The order starts from the easiest to scale up and goes to the most complex. Understanding this differentiation is essential for anyone looking to comprehend the future development path of blockchain technology. Each level has unique characteristics that require different solution approaches.

Computation: The Easiest Layer of Scalability to Solve

Computation is the most straightforward component to scale within the blockchain ecosystem. Available approaches include parallelization—leveraging hints provided by validators or block builders to run operations simultaneously. Additionally, innovative methods such as replacing computation with cryptographic proofs, especially zero-knowledge proofs that enable verification without re-executing the entire computation, are used. The combination of these techniques makes computation one of the mature and easily optimized aspects of blockchain scalability.

Data and State: Layered Challenges in Scalability

If computation is the easiest level to address, then data and state represent increasingly complex challenges. Data is indeed more difficult to scale than computation but still has clear solution pathways. Blockchain systems require guarantees of data availability to ensure transparency and security. Available solutions include data sharding techniques, erasure coding like PeerDAS that optimize data dissemination across the network, and implementing ‘graceful degradation’—allowing nodes with limited capacity to participate in validation even with adjusted block sizes.

State: The Greatest Complexity in Blockchain Scalability

State emerges as the most challenging aspect in efforts to improve blockchain scalability. Every transaction, no matter how small, requires nodes to access and verify the full state of the blockchain. Although state is often abstracted as a Merkle tree structure with only the root stored, updates to this root still depend on the entire state data. This creates a significant bottleneck because no network node can be optimized without sacrificing security or decentralization. Efforts to partition state do exist, but generally require drastic architectural changes and cannot be universally applied across different types of blockchains.

Optimization Strategy: Replacing State with Data

Based on an in-depth analysis of these three scalability levels, Vitalik Buterin proposes a strategic principle for blockchain development. If data can replace the role of state without introducing new centralization assumptions, then this approach should be prioritized. The same logic applies to computation—if computation can replace data functions without increasing centralization risks, this strategy warrants serious consideration. This framework reflects the philosophy that the best scalability solutions are those that maintain decentralization while increasing system capacity. By understanding this hierarchy of difficulty, blockchain developers can make more informed design decisions and allocate resources more strategically to achieve sustainable scalability.