Azu Research Report: Don't Be Deceived by Appearances! The Real Moat of Red Stuff is Not 'Good Looking', But This 'Double Standard' Mechanism

I am Azu. Many people stop at '2D erasure coding sounds advanced' when discussing Red Stuff, but the key to Walrus is not beautiful typesetting; it’s about using different thresholds for two dimensions, specifically serving the asynchronous reality of the open network where 'messages may be delayed, nodes may drop, and opponents may disrupt your rhythm'.

The document states clearly: the significance of the low-threshold dimension is to provide honest nodes that did not timely receive symbols during the writing process with a 'makeup entry' — they do not have to wait for the whole network to synchronize, and they can restore the missing part, allowing writing to be closer to the real internet rather than relying on 'false synchronization' to hold on. This is like upgrading the system's fault tolerance from 'hope it doesn't drop packets' to 'even if it drops, it can self-heal'.

The high-threshold dimension is even more ruthless: it must support the security boundaries of the read path and the challenge period. Walrus clearly points out that in an asynchronous network, attackers can exploit network delays — for example, slowing down nodes, creating a 'seemingly compliant' illusion, or even attempting to gather challenge materials without actually storing data. The reason Red Stuff can still support storage challenges in an asynchronous environment is precisely because this high-threshold dimension raises the bar for 'reading and verification', making delays no longer a cheat for opponents.

What I like about Walrus is this: it is not writing papers in an ideal network, but repeatedly emphasizing in official articles that Red Stuff is the 'engine' of Walrus, aiming to achieve high resilience, effective recovery, and strong security simultaneously in an asynchronous environment. Looking again at the real signals on Twitter: the official data from the Haulout mainnet hackathon — 887 people registered, 282 submissions, participation from 12+ countries, indicating that developers are indeed completing assignments around this underlying capability rather than just forwarding narrative graphics.

Simply put, Red Stuff's '2D' is not decoration, but entrusting recovery to the low-threshold dimension and security and verifiability to the high-threshold dimension — this is the structured answer that a storage protocol aimed at the open network should have.

@Walrus 🦭/acc $WAL #Walrus