SuperEx Educational Series: Understanding State Size and State Bloat

#StateSize #StateBloat

In the next few lessons, we will focus on a series of State-related topics, including State Size, State Bloat, State Rent, State Pruning, and more. Today, we begin with State Size and State Bloat.

When discussing blockchain scalability, people usually focus on visible metrics such as throughput (TPS), transaction fees, and confirmation speed. But at a deeper level, there is a far less discussed issue — one that ultimately determines whether a public blockchain can remain sustainable in the long run: State Size.

You can think of “state” as the active ledger of the blockchain world. Every account balance, every smart contract variable, every NFT ownership record, and every staking position is written into this ledger. Over time, this ledger keeps growing thicker.

When the ledger becomes so large that ordinary nodes can no longer reasonably maintain it, we call this phenomenon State Bloat.

This is not a short-term problem, but a form of chronic risk. If it is not properly recognized and addressed through design mechanisms early on, the long-term development of a public blockchain ecosystem may be quietly constrained by this seemingly invisible burden.

Today, we start from the basics.

What Is State?

In the blockchain context, “state” refers to the valid condition of the entire network at a given moment, including for example:

How much balance each account currently holds
The real-time value of a smart contract variable
Which wallet owns a specific NFT
Whether a user is participating in a staking pool
The collateral positions inside a DeFi protocol

All of this data forms the operational foundation of the on-chain world. State Size is the total volume of all these data combined.

Importantly, state is not historical data — it is live data. Nodes must always know the current state in order to verify whether new blocks are valid.

Why Does State Keep Growing?

Because every new on-chain interaction may modify the state:

Creating a new address
Deploying a new contract
Depositing assets into DeFi
Opening a staking position
Minting an NFT

Many of these actions add new entries to the state ledger. More importantly, these entries usually do not disappear automatically — even if they are no longer used.

For example:

A wallet address that is never used again
An abandoned smart contract variable
A long-forgotten NFT record

All of these still need to be stored by every full node. As on-chain activity becomes more active, the size of the state naturally follows a long-term upward trend.

What Is State Bloat?

If State Size describes the ongoing process, then State Bloat refers to the situation where this growth crosses a critical threshold.

When state growth begins to affect network operation, State Bloat emerges, bringing several concrete consequences:

Nodes require more hardware resources
The cost of running a node increases
Synchronization times become longer
Operational complexity rises

Eventually, only well-funded institutions with professional infrastructure can afford to run nodes, while ordinary participants drop out — gradually weakening decentralization.

Why Is State Heavier Than Historical Data?

Many people assume that blockchain data pressure mainly comes from historical transactions. In reality, historical data can be archived, compressed, or even pruned.

State is different. Nodes must always maintain the latest state in order to verify:

Whether balances are sufficient
Whether contracts can execute
Whether transactions are valid

Without state, the blockchain cannot function at all. What truly determines node cost is not history — but state.

The Hidden Risks of State Bloat

Risk One: Rising Node Thresholds

Node operation costs do not explode overnight — they rise gradually as state grows:

Disk usage increases
Memory pressure rises
Database complexity increases

Once the threshold becomes high enough, individual nodes exit, leaving only:

Mining pools
Institutions
Professional hosting providers

This causes long-term, structural damage to decentralization.

Risk Two: Higher Barriers for New Nodes

To join the network, a new node must fully synchronize the current state. If synchronization time grows from hours to days or even weeks, it becomes a natural deterrent for new participants.

As entry barriers rise, network openness declines.

Risk Three: Easier Resource-Abuse Attacks

Some attackers may exploit the state mechanism itself, for example by repeatedly creating new accounts or writing excessive contract storage.

Each action may be cheap individually, but collectively they impose long-term resource burdens on the entire network — forming a classic source of DoS-style risk.

Why Not Just “Delete Unused Data”?

This sounds reasonable, but the reality is more complex:

It is hard to define what counts as “unused”
Deletion may break contract logic
Historical traceability must be preserved
Consensus rules would become more complex

If handled improperly, such actions could even cause inconsistent on-chain behavior, introducing systemic risk. State management is therefore a core system design challenge — not a simple cleanup task.

What Solutions Is the Industry Exploring?

Direction One: State Rent

The core idea is that occupying long-term state resources should require ongoing payment. If fees stop, the state may be frozen or removed from primary storage.

This approach can:

Limit meaningless long-term occupation
Suppress junk state growth
Introduce economic incentives

It is an economic-layer regulation mechanism.

Direction Two: ZK and Off-Chain Proofs

Using zero-knowledge proofs and related techniques, part of the state can be stored off-chain while remaining verifiable. This reduces on-chain storage while preserving security and consistency.

Direction Three: Stateless Clients

This is a cutting-edge approach: nodes no longer store the full state, but instead rely on state proofs included in blocks for verification.

Its advantages are clear:

Lower deployment costs
Easier participation
Expanded network coverage

It is widely considered a potential structural shift for the industry.

Why Should Ordinary Users Care?

Even if you only:

Trade
Use NFTs
Participate in DeFi
Join DAOs

State-related issues still affect you indirectly:

Transaction fees
Network congestion
Upgrade complexity
Node count and security

In the long run, this even determines whether your assets can continue to exist in a truly open and decentralized environment.

Conclusion: State Is a Long-Term Burden for Public Blockchains

Growing state size often reflects ecosystem prosperity — which is a good thing. But without proper management mechanisms, it will eventually turn into systemic pressure.

That is why more and more public blockchains are focusing on: