Woofun AI reports that Vitalik Buterin published the "Extremely Lean Chain" proposal to radically compress Ethereum consensus state requirements. The design shifts state management to validators, who submit daily STARK proofs to update balances, thereby eliminating per-epoch processing burdens. Key mechanisms include removing on-chain public keys in favor of deposit tree indices, re-randomizing validator identities daily for anonymity, and exposing withdrawal addresses only during transactions. Buterin stated that combining single-slot finality and quantum-resistant signatures could reduce per-validator state from 180 bytes to 6 bytes. Each validator must process approximately 5400 Merkle branches daily, a task completable within one hour on standard hardware, with on-chain load further mitigated through aggregated proofs. The architecture also facilitates "virtually free" single secret leader election, operating with a conservative cycle of one day and a lower limit of one hour.