Vitalik Urges ’Garbage Collection’ to Reduce Ethereum Protocol Bloat

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that continual additions to the protocol, preserved by backward compatibility, are causing complexity and "bloat" that harm trustlessness, rebuildability and self‑sovereignty. In a post on X he argued that excessive code, multiple advanced cryptographic primitives and ad hoc rules make the protocol hard to inspect, maintain or reimplement if teams disappear. Buterin proposed introducing an explicit "simplification" or "garbage collection" function in Ethereum’s development process to remove rarely used features, reduce total lines of code, limit reliance on complex cryptography and add clearer invariants. He cited the PoW→PoS transition and recent gas cost reforms as past examples of effective cleanup and suggested demoting seldom‑used core features into smart contracts. The proposal contrasts with Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko’s view that blockchains must keep iterating continuously to remain relevant. For traders, the news signals possible future protocol-level cleanups that could affect client software, node operators and long-term network resilience. Primary keywords: Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, protocol bloat, garbage collection. Secondary/semantic keywords: backward compatibility, simplification, PoS, gas cost reform, client maintenance.