diff --git a/trie/committer.go b/trie/committer.go
index db753e2fa0..221681f2e2 100644
--- a/trie/committer.go
+++ b/trie/committer.go
@@ -22,8 +22,6 @@ import (
 	"sync"
 
 	"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/common"
-	"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/crypto"
-	"golang.org/x/crypto/sha3"
 )
 
 // leafChanSize is the size of the leafCh. It's a pretty arbitrary number, to allow
@@ -44,8 +42,6 @@ type leaf struct {
 // By 'some level' of parallelism, it's still the case that all leaves will be
 // processed sequentially - onleaf will never be called in parallel or out of order.
 type committer struct {
-	sha crypto.KeccakState
-
 	onleaf LeafCallback
 	leafCh chan *leaf
 }
@@ -53,9 +49,7 @@ type committer struct {
 // committers live in a global sync.Pool
 var committerPool = sync.Pool{
 	New: func() interface{} {
-		return &committer{
-			sha: sha3.NewLegacyKeccak256().(crypto.KeccakState),
-		}
+		return &committer{}
 	},
 }
 
@@ -236,14 +230,6 @@ func (c *committer) commitLoop(db *Database) {
 	}
 }
 
-func (c *committer) makeHashNode(data []byte) hashNode {
-	n := make(hashNode, c.sha.Size())
-	c.sha.Reset()
-	c.sha.Write(data)
-	c.sha.Read(n)
-	return n
-}
-
 // estimateSize estimates the size of an rlp-encoded node, without actually
 // rlp-encoding it (zero allocs). This method has been experimentally tried, and with a trie
 // with 1000 leafs, the only errors above 1% are on small shortnodes, where this