Buterin proposes splitting Ethereum transactions into two components

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Sept. 6 proposed splitting transactions into two components — "actions" and "dependencies" — to let validators process checks in parallel.

"An action is an effect that a transaction has," Buterin wrote, arguing that separating the two lets developers optimize them in fundamentally different ways.

Buterin tied the proposal to recent work on account abstraction, state design and cryptographic proof aggregation, citing EIP-8141, alternative state models, keyed nonces and recursive STARK-based mempools. Dependencies that need no access to Ethereum state — what he called "pure" checks — could be verified once by the mempool and never executed again by every validator.

Large collections of such checks could eventually be replaced by a single STARK proving they were all performed correctly, a shift that would strip redundant validation work out of the execution layer and cut the cost of processing each transaction.

Why the split matters

Validation and execution are traditionally intertwined: nodes receive a transaction, validate the required information, then execute it. Buterin argues that dependencies carry properties that make them especially suited to optimization. Many can be checked in parallel, some can be examined by the mempool before the transaction reaches a block, and others never touch Ethereum state at all.

The framing extends work already underway. Account abstraction research such as ERC-4337 and the EIP-8141 line decouple who pays for a transaction from who signs it; a cleaner actions-versus-dependencies model would push that separation into how the network proves a transaction is valid. STARK-based rollups that batch thousands of transactions into single proofs stand to benefit most directly, since the same proof-aggregation logic could compress validation on the main chain.

Buterin's remarks are a research direction, not a scheduled upgrade. No EIP has been formally proposed for inclusion in a future hard fork, and the timeline remains open. Still, the proposal points to where Ethereum's roadmap is heading after years of debate over account abstraction and state bloat, and it gives developers a concrete target for how transaction formats could evolve.

For teams building on Ethereum, the payoff would come in lower gas costs and faster confirmations if redundant validation is compressed into single proofs. The proposal also sharpens Ethereum's competitive case against faster L1 rivals, since cheaper validation narrows the throughput gap that has pushed activity toward Solana and other chains.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.