Given an ethereum address, get all transactions involving it. Such a simple and fundamental thing to ask, though all EVM chains and other EVM inspired chains clients simply can't answer this easily.

The way the node client is built it's unable to provide this answer which has given raise to a host of problems as new protocols and indexing services arise to fill in the gap. As ethereum protocol development enters its 10th year the problem seems to be ignored and sweeped under the rug, such as with the removal of archive nodes.

All the above leads to a very unfortunate centralization of what was supposed to be a decentralized protocol. In the talk we will try to analyze the problem, some existing solutions and approaches and how we can do better so that ethereum can go into the next 100 years and have historical data available.

https://protocol.berlin