On today’s blockchains, value and information are tightly linked: transactions, collateral, and records are only trustworthy if the underlying networks can reliably store and settle them. Walrus operates within this system as a decentralized data layer for financial and application activity on Sui, using the WAL token for protocol access, governance decisions, and staking.
Its architecture centers on blob storage combined with erasure coding, a method that breaks large datasets into fragments and spreads them across numerous nodes. By avoiding dependence on any single machine or operator, this approach lowers the chance that outages or shutdowns could cut off access to essential data. That resilience is especially important for decentralized applications, private transactions, and setups where off-chain data must remain linked to on-chain execution. Built-in privacy features also let users and apps prove or exchange information selectively, without making all details public.
The downside is added complexity. Managing storage, retrieval, and privacy in a decentralized environment is inherently more difficult and slower than relying on centralized cloud services, and overall performance depends heavily on the health and coordination of the participating nodes.
