Walrus treats data like capital because in Web3, data isn’t just something you “keep” it’s something you deploy. A file can be an NFT’s media, a game’s state, an AI dataset, or proof that a business process happened. If it’s unavailable, the app doesn’t degrade gracefully. It breaks. That makes reliable access a form of productive asset, not passive storage.
That’s why Walrus is built around hot blob storage on Sui: data is split, distributed, and recoverable under churn using erasure coding, so availability becomes something the network can price and enforce. In capital terms, you’re not buying bytes you’re buying uptime, recoverability, and censorship resistance.
WAL then functions like the incentive and governance layer that keeps providers honest. When demand is real and recurring, data behaves like an income producing asset: apps pay continuously because availability generates value continuously.