Buterin Walks Back 2017 Take as ZK Proofs Make Full Verification Practical

• Vitalik Buterin reversed his 2017 view on full user verification.
• ZK-SNARKs now allow full chain correctness checks without replaying all transactions.
• Buterin said failures like censorship, outages, and validator concentration changed his views.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he no longer agrees with a June 9, 2017, post where he dismissed the idea of regular users verifying the full blockchain history.

That comment came during a debate over whether blockchains should store only transaction order or also commit the full system state, such as balances and smart contract data.

At the time, Buterin opposed designs where users could only rebuild the state by replaying every transaction or by trusting third parties.

Ethereum chose to commit state roots directly into block headers, which allows any user to prove a balance or contract value through a Merk…

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