The field of blockchain and decentralized systems is rapidly evolving, with a focus on improving consensus mechanisms, decentralization, and scalability. Recent research has explored new approaches to achieving statelessness in Ethereum, such as using Verkle trees and binary Merkle trees with SNARKs, which have shown promising results in reducing the state burden on Ethereum nodes. Additionally, there has been a shift towards more energy-efficient and useful consensus mechanisms, such as Proof of Useful Intelligence (PoUI), which combines security with practical utility by performing AI tasks to earn coins. Decentralization has also been a key area of focus, with studies quantifying decentralization in proof-of-stake blockchains and introducing alternative weighting models to improve decentralization metrics. Noteworthy papers include ScaloWork, which presents a new framework for Useful PoW that decides the block proposer for the Bitcoin blockchain based on the solution for the dominating set problem, and GRANITE, a Byzantine-resilient dynamic gossip learning framework that maintains convergence with up to 30% Byzantine nodes. Overall, these advancements aim to create more secure, efficient, and decentralized blockchain systems.