On paper, Walrus Seal sounds like what decentralized storage has been promising for years: real access control.
Not trust us, it’s private but cryptographic proof that only specific wallets can decrypt specific files.
Which, to be fair, is the right idea.
So I tried it the day it launched.
Uploading an encrypted file was smooth. That part works. Things got more philosophical once I tried deciding who could actually read it. Creating an access policy took time. Granting access took four transactions. Three failed with generic errors. The fourth worked. No explanation. Apparently the blockchain felt ready that time.
Here’s what sharing one private file with one wallet looked like:
Step. Time. Cost. Friction
Upload file (encrypted). 3 minutes. ~0.02 WAL. Standard
Create access policy. 8 minutes. ~0.05 WAL. Unclear UI
Grant wallet access. 12 minutes. Failed 3x, No error detail
then ~0.08 WAl
Verify decryption works. 2 minutes. 0. Finally smooth
Total: ~25 minutes and ~0.15 WAL.
For comparison, Google Drive does this in under a minute, costs nothing, and politely shows me who has access. Yes, that comparison is unfair. Unfortunately, it’s also the comparison every user will make anyway.
Technically, Seal is superior. Cryptographic guarantees beat corporate policy. No admin backdoor beats trust our servers.
But in practice, I had to understand undocumented policy formats, wallet checksum edge cases that fail silently, and three different cost concepts just to make “private” actually mean private.
I figured it out. That’s not the same thing as it being usable.
The compliance story is where things get ambitious. Walrus positions Seal for institutional use, so I tested that angle. In theory, you can restrict access to KYC’d wallets. In practice, there’s no KYC oracle, no attestation standard—just manual allowlisting. So compliance currently looks a lot like trust me, I checked.
The cryptography moved forward. The process stayed comfortably in 2020.
These are the checkpoints I’m watching next:
Date
Checkpoint. My Question
April 15.Quilt adoption (bundled files)|Does small-file UX improve?
April 30.Seal mobile integration|Can I manage access from my
phone?
May 15. First enterprise announcement|Is anyone actually using this for compliance?
If Seal stays developer-only, that’s fine. It becomes infrastructure for protocols. That’s useful.
It’s just very different from being private storage for people who don’t enjoy debugging their files.
Seal works. The math is real. The access control is programmable.
Right now, “programmable” mostly means you do the programming.
I stored one sensitive document there. Then I mirrored it to Google Drive anyway. Decentralized backup, centralized primary. Not the future—but apparently the present.
So I’m curious:
Where’s your trust threshold for private storage?
Cryptographic certainty with friction or convenience backed by policy?@Walrus 🦭/acc