The initial involvement of Walrus with me was not due to a large green candle. In fact, it is a result of a very boring, very functional, problem that a serious on-chain app will inevitably face: the chain can be decentralized, the contract can be unstoppable, but the data is still, by necessity, living on a breakable layer. Pictures, videos, game saves, AI data, app settings, archives, proofs, logs, even the most trivial NFT metadata. And this is the point at which Walrus begins to feel less experimental to me, living on the Sui layer, than a base layer use case the crypto world has been lacking.
Walrus is a “blob storage” protocol that is blockchain-based and developed to be a cost-effective way to store large data files (or “blobs”), yet still be able to retrieve them. Its key point is simple: instead of requiring all nodes to store a full copy of data (cost-prohibitive), Walrus erasure coding allows data to be “sharded into many nodes in many storage nodes” so it can still be retrievable even if some nodes are turned offline. Walrus dubs “RedStuff,” a “2D erasure coding strategy optimized for reliability and self-healing properties.” In simpler terms: imagine shattering a paper into many pieces and then distributing those pieces to thousands of people. And still manage to recreate a certified copy of the paper if thousands of people failed to show up to retrieve it. That unique balance of redundancy for recovery and cost-effectiveness is what earned Walrus to be potentially “permanent, affordable storage solutions” rather than “cryptographic currency alone for storage solutions.” Its cost-effectiveness is even pitched in its own documentation: “about 5 times the size of stored blobs. Much better than brute-force methods.”
But here comes the bit that matters for traders: “durability, affordability,” unlike in storage, aren’t buzzwords. They’re the solution. A storage system that can’t maintain a stable price tag doesn’t need an exceptional tech solution, because apps will simply not stick around. Walrus specifically aims to maintain a stable storage price in fiat terms, and that’s a significant consideration. The user pays WAL for storage services for a set timeframe, after which the WAL received gets spread around in storage nodes and stakers as payment. This isn’t a “pay in tokens, get storage deal,” it’s a “pay once, get predictable storage” deal.
As of the middle of January 2026, WAL is very much a microcap that nobody can trade anymore. Big-picture tracker data shows WAL at approximately $0.156 with a 24-hour volume of approximately $25.9M, and a market cap of approximately $246M with approximately 1.577B circulating supply and a max supply of 5B. These figures are far from being successful, yet they mean one very important thing to investors: the market has already recognized Walrus Infrastructure enough to not be a “meme of the weekend,” but is still green enough to be influenced by adoption over market repricing.
But why a title claim of “Not Just for Sui”? It’s because while Walrus may be a tool for the Sui blockchain infrastructure, it solves a problem that is ubiquitous. Every blockchain that seeks to offer a real-world set of apps will require a secure method for storing data that doesn’t have to be nested in the blockchain. You don’t upload a 300MB video “on chain.” You upload it elsewhere and upload a reference on chain. The problem with this method is that it’s where centralization really resides. Walrus is a solution that seeks to eradicate that weak link and secure blob storage methods as verifiable and economically driven. According to their white paper, it is a “third approach” for such a storage method.
If you have been following the space for a while, you may have seen storage stories come and go. It seems like there is always a new “IPFS but tokenized” project or a “replication network” trying to be the next Big Thing. Some of them have interesting work to do, but the truth is brutal. Storage is not a game. Storage is a utility business, where the winners are the ones that are “dull and reliable.” That’s why the “decentralized” part of Walrus’ edge is not enough on its own. It is programmability + efficiency, where you can store blobs, read them quickly, and make it durable enough to act like infrastructure. It is straightforward how the project solves its problem set, writes the Walrus website: “builders can store, read, manage, and program large data files such as video, images, and PDF files, while a decentralized architecture takes on availability and security.”
Where the Walrus will get interesting for traders is where adoption may manifest itself. It won’t be a ‘partnership announcement’ that sparks the change overnight. It will appear in usage patterns: more blobs being stored, more apps relying on it, more WAL being paid for storage, more reward money flowing to operator balances, more stable economics. If you were trying to analyze this like a investor, you’d want to look into real-world indicators, not feeling or gut feelings. Specialized indicators like those available on Metric Dashboard sites like Token Terminal monitor fundamentals and trends (such as token trade volumes over broader timescales) to help you determine whether Walrus is entering into ‘real usage’ or being traded purely for chart chartism.
There’s also a strategic reason why “the standard for permanent storage” is so important in all this. “Permanence” is a coordination problem. After a basis of belief is established around durability and low costs, people start to build upon it. If so, the costs begin to increase when people change. Think about this as a game where world state, resources, and player info are maintained in a layer called “storage” which is intended to be persistent. Or how about some sort of ‘AI’ app where training shards and model artifacts are maintained in “permanent” Decentralized Storage. When either become successful, the “storage layer” is basically part of the stack. It’s “lock in” without “lock in” feeling like “lock in.” It’s “reliability.”
Of course, not all of this can be risk-free. Storage networks could fail financially even if they are otherwise successful. “Rewards” could fail to properly incentivize storage operators. This could harm reliability. Inappropriate token emission schedules could cause storage operators to not remain. Inconsistent prices could cause the developer community not to contribute. And if demand never comes beyond the home ecosystem for the ecosystem’s uses case, Walrus could continue to be properly referred to as “Sui infrastructure” rather than Walrus being a cross-ecosystem standard.
But if you want the most salient ‘human’ message, it would be: "Walrus isn’t interesting because it’s shiny. It’s interesting because it addresses one of the most underrated truths about crypto: that while decentralization is often about execution, it’s also about data. And projects that figure out data in a way that devs can trust, year in, year out, typically last longer than projects that are hot for a hot second."
