According to PANews, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has released a new article titled 'The Future Development of the Ethereum Protocol (Part Five): The Purge.' In the article, Buterin addresses one of the challenges Ethereum faces: the default growth in complexity and bloat of any blockchain protocol over time. This issue manifests in two areas: historical data and protocol features.

To ensure Ethereum's long-term sustainability, it is necessary to apply strong countermeasures to these trends, reducing complexity and bloat over time. However, it is also crucial to retain one of the blockchain's great features: permanence. The key goal of 'The Purge' is to reduce client storage requirements by minimizing or eliminating the need for each node to permanently store all historical records. This may eventually lead to a declaration of reduced storage needs. Additionally, the initiative aims to lower protocol complexity by removing unnecessary features.