Daily Observation of Cryptography Technology: Ethereum plans to shorten the consensus layer retention window to 36 days, significantly reducing the synchronization and storage pressure on nodes
Released on August 19, 2026. As the historical state and block data of the Ethereum network continue to expand, the hardware threshold for node operation is facing severe challenges. The Ethereum community recently officially released a key EIP improvement proposal, suggesting to significantly shorten the consensus layer (CL) block retention window from approximately 146 days to about 36.4 days. As a non-fork informational change, this proposal aims to significantly reduce the backfill overhead for new nodes after checkpoint synchronization, further safeguarding the decentralized foundation of the Ethereum network.
