One of the hardest problems in decentralized systems is not technology, it is time. Many networks work well in their first months, when incentives are high and attention is strong. Over the years, however, rewards change, participants leave, and systems quietly weaken. Data storage is especially vulnerable to this decay, because it requires people to keep paying and serving long after the excitement has faded.
@Walrus 🦭/acc is designed to solve this by tying data preservation directly to economic incentives.
When someone stores data on Walrus, they pay in WAL for a defined period of availability. That payment is distributed over time to the nodes responsible for keeping the data alive. This creates a steady revenue stream for storage providers, not just a one-time fee. As long as the data is valuable and kept under contract, nodes are paid to continue serving it.
Stakers also play a role. By delegating WAL to nodes, they help select which operators become part of the network. Their rewards depend on those nodes behaving well, so they are motivated to support reliable providers. This creates a second layer of oversight that reinforces long-term behavior.
The result is a system where data is not kept alive by goodwill or hype. It is kept alive because doing so is profitable. That is what allows Walrus to support data that must last for years, whether it is AI training material, financial records, or the memory of decentralized organizations.