Statelessness is the goal. Verkle trees enable stateless clients by drastically shrinking witness sizes, which eliminates the primary bottleneck for scaling Ethereum's validator set.
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Why Verkle Trees Will Render Many Gas Tricks Obsolete
Verkle trees are a foundational upgrade that enables stateless clients. This will fundamentally change the gas optimization landscape, making many complex storage tricks redundant by drastically reducing the cost of state proofs.
introduction
THE STATE EXPIRATION
Introduction
Verkle trees are a cryptographic upgrade that fundamentally changes how Ethereum stores and accesses data, making many current gas optimization techniques redundant.
Gas tricks target storage. Current optimizations like SSTORE refunds, CREATE2 address pre-calculation, and EIP-2929 gas cost adjustments are workarounds for the high cost of Merkle-Patricia Trie (MPT) state accesses.
Verkle trees obsolete these hacks. With vector commitments replacing Merkle proofs, witness sizes shrink from ~300 bytes to ~150 bytes, making state access costs predictable and low. Protocols like Uniswap and Aave that meticulously manage storage slots will see their complexity yield diminishing returns.
Evidence: The current MPT requires a 7-layer deep proof for a storage slot; a Verkle tree proof is a single 48-byte element. This 20x reduction in proof size is what enables stateless verification.
thesis-statement
THE VERKLE SHIFT
The Core Argument: Proofs, Not Storage, Are the Bottleneck
Verkle trees fundamentally change the scaling bottleneck from state storage to proof generation, making current gas optimization hacks redundant.
Ethereum's current bottleneck is state proof size, not state storage. The 256-bit Merkle-Patricia Trie forces clients to fetch and verify massive witness data for every transaction, which is the real gas and performance killer.
Verkle trees compress proofs by ~20-30x using vector commitments. This collapses the witness data for complex operations like Uniswap swaps or Aave liquidations from kilobytes to bytes, directly slashing calldata costs.
Gas tricks like storage packing become obsolete. Projects like OpenZeppelin's ERC-4337 account abstraction and protocols like MakerDAO use intricate storage slots to save gas. Verkle trees eliminate the need by making all state access uniformly cheap.
The new bottleneck is proof generation speed. Validators and L2 sequencers (Arbitrum, Optimism) must now optimize for fast KZG or IPA proof creation, not clever SSTORE patterns. Hardware acceleration becomes critical.
key-trends
THE END OF GAS GAMES
The Obsolete Tricks: A Eulogy in Three Acts
Verkle Trees, the core data structure for Ethereum's stateless future, will systematically dismantle the ecosystem's most pervasive gas optimization hacks.
01
The Problem: Witness Bloat & State Size
Current Merkle-Patricia Tries force nodes to fetch and verify massive ~300-500 byte witnesses for simple state accesses, creating network bottlenecks. This is the root cause of high gas costs for storage operations.
- Obsoletes: Complex SLOAD/SSTORE patterns, storage packing tricks.
- Enables: Stateless clients, ~1-2 KB witness sizes for any proof.
-90%
Witness Size
100x
Proving Efficiency
02
The Solution: Vector Commitments
Verkle Trees use polynomial commitments (KZG) to create constant-sized proofs regardless of tree depth. A single proof can verify thousands of key-value pairs simultaneously.
- Obsoletes: Merkle proof batching in rollups, complex receipt proof systems.
- Enables: Single proof for entire block execution, trivial light client verification.
O(1)
Proof Size
~100ms
Verification
03
The Problem: Contract Storage Overhead
Gas costs for storage are astronomically high to disincentivize state growth. This led to perverse incentives: protocols like Uniswap v3 store liquidity as bitmap ticks, and projects like ENS use expensive name wrapping to avoid direct storage.
- Obsoletes: Gas-golfed storage layouts, off-chain state via The Graph for simple queries.
- Enables: Cheaper contract-state interactions, more expressive on-chain data models.
10-100x
Cheaper Storage Ops
$B+
TVL Impact
04
The Solution: Parallelized State Access
With tiny, constant-sized proofs, Verkle Trees unlock parallel execution at the protocol level (EIP-6480). Transactions touching disjoint state can be proven independently and verified in parallel.
- Obsoletes: Manual sharding designs, application-layer concurrency tricks (Solana-style).
- Enables: Native ~10k-100k TPS potential for Ethereum L1, simpler rollup designs.
10-100x
Throughput Gain
Massive
Simplicity Win
05
The Problem: Prover Centralization
Today, generating Merkle proofs for large state chunks (e.g., for rollups like Arbitrum or Optimism) is computationally intensive, creating centralization pressure on sequencers and provers.
- Obsoletes: Specialized proving hardware for Merkle trees, centralized proving services.
- Enables: Light hardware can generate full block proofs, democratizing block building.
~10x
Lower Prover Cost
Radical
Decentralization
06
The Final Act: The New Primitive
Verkle Trees aren't just an optimization; they are a new cryptographic primitive for blockchain state. This reshapes the design space for everything from ZK-Rollups (e.g., zkSync, Scroll) to cross-chain messaging (e.g., LayerZero, CCIP).
- Obsoletes: The entire paradigm of 'gas efficiency' as a core dev skill.
- Enables: Protocols designed for verifiability first, cost second. The end of an era.
Paradigm
Shift
2025+
Era Begins
STATEFUL PROOF REVOLUTION
Proof Efficiency: MPT vs. Verkle Trees
A comparison of cryptographic proof systems for blockchain state, showing how Verkle Trees enable stateless clients and eliminate legacy gas optimization hacks.
| Feature / Metric | Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT) | Verkle Tree (Vitalik Buterin, Dankrad Feist) | Implication for Gas Tricks |
|---|---|---|---|
Witness Size for 1k Accounts | ~30-50 KB | ~1-2 KB | ❌ Storage proof batching hacks obsolete |
Proof Aggregation Capability | ✅ Enables single proof for complex multi-op bundles | ||
Stateless Client Support | ❌ Renders state rent arguments & storage pruning tricks moot | ||
Node Type for Proofs | Branch Nodes (20 depth avg.) | Vector Commitment Nodes | ✅ Eliminates 'SLOAD' gas griefing via constant-size proofs |
EVM Integration Complexity | Native (Ethereum pre-Cancun) | Requires New Precompile (EIP-6800) | ✅ Post-upgrade, gas costs decouple from trie depth |
Key Cryptographic Primitive | Keccak256 Hash | Pedersen Commitment + IPA | ❌ KECCAK opcode mining & precompile spam becomes irrelevant |
deep-dive
THE STATE CRISIS
The New Optimization Frontier: Statelessness and Beyond
Verkle trees enable stateless clients, which will eliminate entire categories of gas-optimization hacks by restructuring how nodes access blockchain state.
Verkle trees enable statelessness. Full nodes today must store the entire state (accounts, balances, contracts). Stateless clients verify blocks using small cryptographic proofs, downloading only the specific state they need. This shifts the scaling bottleneck from storage I/O to proof verification.
Gas optimization becomes irrelevant. Current hacks like SSTORE gas refunds, storage slot packing, and contract code chunking exist solely to minimize state footprint. When state access is free for clients, these complex optimizations provide zero benefit. Developers will write simpler, safer code.
Ethereum's roadmap depends on it. The Verkle tree transition (EIP-6800) is a prerequisite for Verkle-based stateless clients. This enables single-slot finality and paves the way for full danksharding. The L2 scaling narrative shifts from rollup-centric to client-centric scaling.
Evidence: A stateless Ethereum client prototype, Portal Network, already demonstrates this. It shows that witness sizes for complex Uniswap V3 swaps are under 2KB, making on-chain state access a non-issue for light clients.
counter-argument
THE ARCHITECTURAL SHIFT
Objection: Won't New Tricks Just Emerge?
Verkle Trees fundamentally alter the state access model, making entire classes of gas optimization exploits structurally impossible.
Verkle Trees eliminate storage proofs. The current gas model incentivizes tricks like warm/cold storage access and SLOAD opcode manipulation. Verkle's statelessness removes the economic incentive for these micro-optimizations by making state access uniformly cheap and verifiable via small proofs.
The attack surface shrinks to consensus logic. Future optimizations will target block proposal and MEV extraction, not state I/O. This mirrors the shift from EVM bytecode hacks to PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation) design after The Merge.
Evidence: Post-Merge, Flashbots' MEV-Boost captured the new optimization frontier. Similarly, Verkle Trees will push innovation into areas like zk-rollup proving and interoperability layers like LayerZero, where complexity and value concentrate.
takeaways
THE END OF GAS OPTIMIZATION AS WE KNOW IT
TL;DR for Protocol Architects
Verkle trees are a state commitment upgrade that fundamentally changes the cost structure of Ethereum state access, making many common gas-saving techniques redundant.
01
The Problem: Witness Size is the Bottleneck
Merkle Patricia Tries require massive ~300-500 byte witnesses for state proofs, forcing protocols to over-engineer for gas. Every storage slot access is penalized.
- High Cost of Proofs: Bulk of gas for SLOAD/ECRECOVER is Merkle proof verification.
- Forced Batching: Protocols like Uniswap V3 use complex storage packing to amortize witness costs.
- State Rent Proposals: Without Verkle trees, statelessness proposals required economically unviable rent schemes.
~300B
Witness Bytes
~80%
Gas Overhead
02
The Solution: Vector Commitments & ~200x Smaller Proofs
Verkle trees use polynomial commitments (e.g., KZG) to shrink proofs to ~150 bytes, regardless of tree depth. State access becomes nearly free.
- Flat Proof Cost: SLOAD gas drops from ~2100 to ~200 gas.
- Stateless Clients: Nodes can validate blocks with tiny proofs, enabling true statelessness and 1TB+ state viability.
- Killer App: Single-Slot Finality: Fast sync with tiny proofs enables the next consensus leap.
~150B
Proof Size
~90%
Gas Cut
03
RIP: Storage Packing & Gas Golfing
Techniques like bit-packing in Uniswap V3 ticks, SSTORE refund chaining, and custom bytecode for storage layout become legacy optimizations.
- OBSOLETE: Complex struct packing to fit 32-byte words.
- OBSOLETE: EIP-2929 warm/cold storage hacks become less critical.
- NEW FOCUS: Protocol logic and MEV capture, not gas accounting. Architect for state abundance, not scarcity.
0
Future Need
100%
Logic Focus
04
The New Bottleneck: Bandwidth & Prover Cost
Gas optimization shifts from EVM opcodes to prover infrastructure. The new scarce resource is the computational cost of generating KZG proofs.
- Centralization Risk: Efficient proving requires specialized hardware (GPUs/ASICs).
- New Market: Proof aggregation services will emerge, similar to today's RPC/MEV infra.
- Protocol Design: Architect for proof batching across users (e.g., rollup-like proving for L1 apps).
~10ms
Prove Time
New Stack
Required
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