Vitalik Buterin recently praised Bitcoin developers. In a post on the X platform on August 16, 2026, the Ethereum founder referred to Utreexo - an innovation from the rival ecosystem - as part of Ethereum’s proposed scaling strategy.
The Utreexo system was introduced in 2019 by Thaddeus Dryja, a researcher at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. The system works by representing Bitcoin’s UTXO set through a compact hash-based accumulator mechanism. Buterin’s praise signals a strong indication that the Ethereum team is starting to look at Bitcoin’s playbook to address their network scalability issues.
Merging Two Worlds
Ethereum does not intend to dismantle the account system that has supported its network for years. Currently, they are researching the addition of a native UTXO-style payment model to complement the legacy system. The primary target is one-off transactions that do not require a persistent state footprint in smart contracts.
The potential efficiency of this design is clearly reflected in the technical figures. A proposal submitted by researcher Toni Wahrstätter in July 2026 estimates that this UTXO model could slash permanent state usage by up to 99.8%.
To manage one billion entries, the new system only requires about 300 MB of permanent state space. This load is extremely small compared to Ethereum’s standard account system architecture, which demands between 100 to 150 GB of storage space for the same number of entries.
The mathematical details of this proposal are also discussed in the recursive-STARK mempool research authored by Buterin. The research document assumes a STARK proof size of around 128 kB. Through this design, each node can recursively combine various validity proofs, which ultimately adds only 2 MB per second of bandwidth overhead to each node.
What Remains Uncertain
All these calculations are still purely research, not a promise of an upgrade. The implementation of UTXO-style payments has not yet been included in the list of features for the Hegotá network upgrade.
Even the core foundation of this new design, namely EIP-8141 or Frame Transactions, has not been finalized. The proposal has only received the status of being considered for inclusion, rather than being confirmed.
In the official network roadmap, the Hegotá upgrade will only take place in 2027, following the launch of the Glamsterdam phase in the fourth quarter of 2026. As of today, native UTXO has not entered the official feature calendar for Hegotá.
This research is not yet a definitive commitment. However, when Ethereum’s core developers are open to adopting the workings of their arch-rival, the rivalry between the top two crypto camps can apparently be set aside in the pursuit of data savings.
Sourced from crypto.news.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
