Walrus is a decentralized and secure storage system that uses blockchain as a control plane. The blockchain handles governance and metadata, while a separate committee of storage nodes is responsible for storing and retrieving the actual data, known as blobs.
Walrus uses the Red Stuff encoding and decoding algorithm for security and reliability. It also uses Merkle trees to verify data integrity. The Sui blockchain is used for governance and coordination, but Walrus can be adapted to work with any blockchain that meets the basic requirements.
Walrus operates in epochs, during which users can write and read data. Its design supports the dynamic availability of storage nodes, meaning the system continues to function even if nodes change or become temporarily unavailable. In the future, Walrus will go beyond the honest-malicious model and provide storage challenges to make data even more secure and trustworthy.
