Glossary
Stateless Client
An Ethereum node that validates blocks without storing the full state, relying instead on cryptographic witnesses supplied alongside each block to prove the data it touches.
A stateless client verifies blocks without keeping a local copy of the entire chain state. Instead of looking accounts and storage up in a database it holds, it receives a compact cryptographic witness — a set of proofs against the state root — bundled with each block. The witness contains exactly the state the block reads or writes, so the client can re-execute the transactions and confirm the resulting root is correct.
This shifts the burden of state storage off the validator and onto block producers, dramatically lowering the disk and sync requirements for participating in consensus. Statelessness is a central goal of Ethereum's long-term roadmap and depends on more efficient commitments such as Verkle trees, whose small witnesses make per-block proofs practical. Lighter clients mean more independent verifiers and stronger decentralization.