How long ago were you looking at it? I have no idea whether they've implemented anything like that but they do make regular updates. Btw another big change the

How long ago were you looking at it? I have no idea whether they've implemented anything like that but they do make regular updates. Btw another big change the researchers are working on is statelessness, where the on-chain data is just merkle roots, the actual data is held off-chain in a distributed but reliable way, and clients submit merkle proofs with their transactions. That would drastically reduce the amount of data that full nodes have to store, and presumably allow large reductions in storage prices. (But that doesn't mean solc shouldn't work on compiler improvements like you're talking about, they're not the ones working on statelessness.)