Walrus replaces the traditional subscription system of cloud services with a market-oriented solution based on the WAL token. Whereas traditional cloud services such as AWS S3 are centered on subscription charges and high transfer charges, Walrus adopts the erasure coding replication factor of 4.5x in order to reduce charges while not compromising on the safety of the data. In traditional services, customers pay subscription charges while in the new system, they purchase storage time via smart contracts. Data changes from being a primitive cost on a business server to becoming a verifiable asset.
Staking will ensure that the nodes remain honest, making the system competitive in the field of central archives, while there would be no lock-in in this system. The system establishes an independent infrastructure for the internet’s biggest datasets; the storage verification process scales in efficiency. This shift in the economy for protocols over services represents the biggest change in the way the world preserves information.