Walrus's memory entropy reduction: When verifiability stifles the evolutionary potential of information
Walrus's core promise is "end-to-end verifiable integrity"—once data is registered as a Sui Blob, its hash becomes an immutable anchor of truth. After a Flatlander user uploads a video, any third party can verify that it has not been modified. This seems to end the trust crisis of the digital age.
However, on a macro scale of the information ecosystem, this "integrity" is triggering a memory entropy reduction: by locking byte sequences, the system is suppressing the natural evolution of information in its dissemination, interpretation, and recreation. Walrus is not preserving memory, but freezing meaning, depriving it of the ability to adapt to new contexts, stimulate new understandings, and participate in new narratives.
This article will reveal this entropy reduction crisis from three levels: version rigidity, interpretation monopoly, and re-creation blockage, and explain its structural roots in conjunction with Walrus's technical architecture (Red Stuff coding, Sui object model, Flatlander implementation).
I. Version Stagnation: The Snapshot Model Kills the Growth Potential of Memory
Human knowledge is inherently evolutionary. Scientific theories are updated after being falsified, news reports are revised with new evidence, and personal memories are reconstructed with experience. Wikipedia's success stems from its explicit version chain: each editor leaves a trace, allowing readers to track how knowledge has changed.
But Walrus's Blob is an atomic snapshot. You cannot:
Additional revisions were made to the original Blob;
The statement reads, "This version is outdated; please refer to the new version."
Build an automatic redirection mechanism.
If a user discovers an error in the video, the only option is to destroy the old Blob and create a new one. However:
The old version can still be indexed by third parties (because its hash is valid);
The new and old versions are not linked on the blockchain, so readers cannot tell which is new and which is old.
Social links (such as shared URLs) pointing to older versions can cause confusion.
The Flatlander team attempted to manually add an "updated" notification to posts, but this relied on user compliance and could not be verified by the protocol. Walrus's integrity only covers static states, not dynamic processes.
As a result, Walrus encourages "one-time releases" and penalizes "continuous modifications." It is suitable for releasing NFT metadata (which must be permanent), but not for carrying living knowledge. Memory is reduced to fossils rather than organisms.
II. Explaining Monopoly: Multiple Interpretations of Hash Verification Suppression
Walrus's "verifiability" presupposes a dangerous premise: the raw bytes themselves represent the ultimate meaning. As long as the hash matches, the content is "true." But this ignores the fact that meaning lies not in the bytes, but in the interpretation.
A protest video:
The police could interpret this as "incitement to violence";
The reporter could interpret this as "citizen protest";
Scholars may interpret this as a "space politics performance".
These interpretations are all reasonable and depend on context, cultural framework, and viewing location. However, Walrus only certifies that "the video was not edited," not "which interpretation is closer to the truth." Worse still, its structure reinforces the interpretive authority of the original uploader—because only he can create the Blob, and others can only passively consume it.
In contrast, while traditional media may be biased, it allows for commentary, rebuttal, and derivative works; social media, though chaotic, supports forwarding, quoting, and mashups. Walrus's "integrity," however, creates interpretive inertia: since the content has not been altered, the original version is authoritative. Diverse voices are marginalized as "external noise."
This is especially dangerous with politically sensitive content. Authoritarian regimes can encourage citizens to upload evidence to Walrus and then claim, "Look, the blockchain proves this video is real"—ignoring the fact that it has been selectively edited or taken out of context. Verifiability becomes a tool for manipulation.
III. Re-creation Blockage: The Stifling Culture of Atomic Objects
Human culture relies on derivative creation: remixes, memes, fan fiction, parodies. These are not "theft," but rather the core mechanisms for the reproduction of meaning.
However, Walrus's Blob model is extremely unfriendly to this:
A Blob is an atomic object and cannot be partially referenced (e.g., "use only this 5-second clip").
There is no built-in license field (such as CC license), and secondary creators need to negotiate separately;
Any modifications require creating a completely new Blob, severing its connection to the original.
Flatlander users have tried to create "video mashups," but have found that:
Multiple Blob fragments cannot be directly combined;
You must download all the original videos, edit them locally, and then upload the new Blob.
New works do not automatically belong to the original author, which can easily lead to copyright disputes.
This makes Walrus a slowdown in cultural production. It protects the control of the original creators but sacrifices the fluidity of collective creativity. In a meme-driven digital age, this design seems out of place.
IV. Information Thermodynamics Perspective: Why Entropy Reduction is Dangerous
From the perspective of information thermodynamics, a healthy information ecosystem should maintain a moderate increase in entropy—that is, allow noise, variation, and recombination to cope with environmental changes. DNA evolves through mutation, language innovates through misuse, and culture is reborn through misreading.
Walrus's architecture, however, pursues maximum entropy reduction: it ensures accurate reconstruction through Red Stuff encoding (n=20, k=6) and eliminates any deviation through hash verification. This is reliable in engineering, but culturally dangerous—it creates an information crystal: structurally perfect, yet unable to grow.
The lessons of history are profound:
Medieval manuscripts became stagnant due to their word-for-word copying.
Early digital rights management (DRM) stifled innovation by prohibiting modification;
Closed social media platforms lose their vitality due to their control over content flow.
If Walrus does not introduce a controllable entropy increase mechanism, he may repeat the same mistake.
V. The Way Out: From Integrity to Evolvability
To reverse the entropy reduction, Walrus needs to redefine "integrity":
Supported version chains:
A Blob can declare a parent version to form an evolutionary map;
The client automatically prompts "An updated version exists".
Open interpretation layer:
Allows the community to add annotation objects that link to the original Blob;
Build a decentralized fact-checking network.
Empowering derivative creations:
Introduce license fields (such as SPDX expressions);
Supports "fragment references" (such as byte-range URIs).
Mysten Labs has been exploring "object inheritance" (see Move RFC #29), but it has not yet been applied to Walrus.
Conclusion: Memory needs to breathe, not just be sealed away.
Walrus's fundamental contradiction lies in treating living memory as if it were an artifact.
Cultural relics require constant temperature and humidity and must not be touched;
Memories, however, need to be touched, misread, reconstructed, and retelled.
A system that only pursues byte consistency, no matter how "verifiable" it may be, cannot bear the weight of civilization.
It may become an instrument in the forensic toolbox, but it is unlikely to become the soil for cultural evolution.
True integrity is not about preventing change.
Instead, it makes change traceable, understandable, and participatory.
And Walrus is still teaching us how to encapsulate memories in amber.
In the torrent of the digital age, what we need is not more archiving,
It is a deeper flow.
Walrus, however, has not yet learned the latter.