Vitalik's detailed explanation of the layered understanding of blockchain scalability: from computation to state, exploring how different layers contribute to overall performance and how improvements can be made at each level to achieve better scalability and efficiency.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently elaborated on his deep understanding of blockchain scalability issues through Odaily media. He proposed a layered framework with insightful perspectives: categorizing blockchain scalability challenges into three dimensions—computation, data, and state—ranging from low to high difficulty. This approach reveals why some scaling solutions are relatively easier to implement while others are significantly more challenging.

Layer 1: Computation—The Easiest Bottleneck to Break Through

Vitalik pointed out that the computation layer is the easiest among the three to scale. Approaches to compute scalability are relatively mature: firstly, through parallelization techniques that utilize “tips” provided by block builders to synchronize multiple computational tasks; secondly, by replacing heavy computations with cryptographic proofs, with zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proof) being the most effective tool. These methods have been validated in various scaling solutions, with clear technical pathways.

Layer 2: Data Storage—A More Complex Challenge

Scaling the data layer is significantly more difficult than the computation layer. The requirement to guarantee data availability makes the problem more complex—nodes must not only access data but also verify that the data is indeed available to all participants. However, there are multiple optimization strategies: data sharding techniques can disperse information across storage; erasure coding methods like PeerDAS can significantly compress data; system designs that support “graceful degradation” allow nodes with low storage capacity to still produce appropriately sized blocks, thereby increasing network participation.

Layer 3: State Management—The Deepest Structural Dilemma

The state layer is the most challenging among the three dimensions. Vitalik emphasized the core difficulty: even to verify a transaction, nodes need to have complete knowledge of the account state. Even if the state is abstracted as a tree structure, retaining only the root hash, updating this root still depends on processing the full state. Although some theoretical solutions like state sharding exist, these methods often require large-scale architectural overhauls and are hard to generalize. This is precisely why state scalability has become the industry’s widely recognized biggest challenge.

Prioritizing Architectural Iterations

Based on the above analysis, Vitalik drew a guiding conclusion: when data can effectively replace state without introducing new centralization risks, it should be the preferred solution; similarly, when computation can substitute data without adding additional centralization assumptions, it is also worth serious consideration. This layered framework is gradually guiding the technological evolution of Ethereum and other blockchains, helping developers find the optimal balance among various scaling solutions. Vitalik’s layered understanding of scalability provides a clear technical roadmap for the entire industry.