Ethereum has plans for state expiry, so that to maintain a verified copy of the blockchain you won't be expected to maintain a growing list of state transitions since genesis anymore.

A sister initiative, weak statelessness, means that you will be able to verify the validity of the chain without needing to store state at all.

https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/verkle_and_state_expiry...

https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/state_expiry_eip