Vitalik today proposed the "minimal consensus chain" plan, the most radical protocol restructuring of Ethereum since the Merge. The core idea: use ZK-STARK to reduce the consensus layer state to only balances and public key indices, moving all other data off-chain for proof. Validator identities are re-randomized daily, single-slot finality, quantum-resistant signature aggregation — aiming directly at a million-validator scale. Ethereum is moving from "all nodes store all states" to "validators only store minimal trust anchors, relying on proof aggregation for the rest." This is a paradigm shift. But the risks are equally clear: can recursive STARK proof generation and aggregation run stably on ordinary hardware? Does the one-day proof window leave room for attackers? And after enhancing validator anonymity, how to prevent Sybil attacks? These details determine whether the plan can move from paper to mainnet. ETH rose over 12% in the past week, as the market prices in "rebuilding expectations." But between technical narrative and actual implementation lies the entire coordination cost of the validator ecosystem.