Ethereum EIP-4444 will be activated on July 8, 2025, allowing the execution client to prune and merge historical data before merging, reducing node storage requirements by 300 to 500GB, and shortening the synchronization time for new nodes to within half a day. The operator can run nodes on 2TB disks, and under aggressive settings, storage can be controlled below 0.5TB. This proposal introduces a partial historical expiration mechanism, which is supported by five major execution clients: Geth v1.16.0, Nethermind 1.32.2, Besu 25.7.0, Erigon v3.0.12, and Reth v1.5.0. This change affects all nodes and validators, but does not affect archive nodes. (Source: Crypto Briefing)
