This relates to some recent thoughts we had around Validity-Only Partial Statelessness (VOPS): nodes keeping just enough data to ensure they can maintain a healthy mempool to ensure we can scale while preserving CR. This would result in just storing the account data, and gives us 25x storage reduction.
I really like the general approach of providing more flexibility in what partial-state nodes choose or need to store, depending on the use case:
- Nodes actively participating in protocol duties (e.g., attesters, FOCIL includers) could be required to store at least the state necessary to maintain the mempool (VOPS).
- However, there shouldn’t be strict requirements for nodes that simply want to read the chain in a trustless, CR-preserving, and privacy-friendly manner. They should just be able to keep as much state as they want depending on how often they would have to query state from elsewhere. But then the “elsewhere” part is still very important, and we’re trying to see if Portal could provide a good enough solution for random access lookups there.