Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum is exploring a hybrid state model that combines elements of Bitcoin's UTXO design, Ethereum's account-based system and approaches in between, as the network looks for ways to scale without sharply increasing node costs. He praised the "Bitcoin camp" for pioneering parts of that thinking through Utreexo and related work, while stressing that the research should not be read as Ethereum preparing to abandon its current account model. The effort builds on earlier proposals to route simple payments through native UTXO-like transactions while retaining accounts for smart contracts, a structure aimed at reducing long-term state growth and easing the storage burden on validators. Full execution nodes now require roughly 0.9 terabytes to 1.3 terabytes of storage, with baseline state growth approaching 100 gigabytes a year, and Buterin argued that scaling cannot rely only on pushing more transactions if the amount of retained data keeps rising. The data mix also matters: about 80% to 82% of Ethereum's stored data comes from new permanent records, compared with 14% from accounts and 4% from contract code. Analysts say a lighter model for simple payments, if adopted, could raise transaction capacity while helping preserve decentralization, though the work remains at the research and protocol-design stage and has no launch date.