When I first saw the name Walrus I expected something playful or meme driven. Then I started reading what they are actually building and it felt more like serious infrastructure. Walrus is not mainly a DeFi app or a private payments coin. Walrus is mostly about storage. It is made to store big files in a decentralized way while using Sui as the blockchain layer that keeps the rules clear and verifiable.
Here is the basic problem Walrus is trying to solve. Blockchains are good at storing small important records like ownership and balances. But they are not good at storing large files like videos, images, datasets, game content, documents, or website files. If you try to store big files directly on a chain it gets very expensive and very slow because many computers would need to keep copies. Walrus was designed because real apps always need large data and most Web3 products still depend on normal cloud storage somewhere behind the scenes. Walrus wants to remove that weak point and make large data more censorship resistant and more reliable.
Walrus stores what they call blobs. A blob is just a big file. The idea is simple in spirit. Sui handles coordination, ownership, payments, and rules. Walrus handles the heavy content. That means an app can keep logic and control on chain while keeping the actual media and data on a decentralized storage network.
Now I want to be very clear about privacy because many people misunderstand this part. Walrus does not automatically make your data private. Their docs say that blobs stored on Walrus are public and discoverable unless you protect them yourself, like encrypting before upload. If someone needs privacy, Walrus points to pairing with Seal for encryption and access control workflows. So privacy is possible, but it is not the default.
So how does Walrus work in a realistic way. Imagine you have a big file and you want it stored. Walrus breaks that file into pieces. Then it uses an encoding design called Red Stuff. The goal is to avoid the costly approach of storing many full copies everywhere while still keeping strong reliability. Instead of full copies, the network stores encoded pieces across many storage nodes so the file can still be rebuilt even if many nodes are missing later.
Walrus runs in time periods called epochs. In each epoch a committee of storage nodes is responsible for keeping data available. This is part of how Walrus organizes who stores what and how the system stays stable over time.
One of the most important ideas in Walrus is Proof of Availability, often shortened to PoA. Think of PoA like a receipt written to the Sui blockchain. It is meant to show that enough storage nodes have acknowledged they are holding the data pieces and that they are obligated to keep them available for the storage period. This helps reduce the trust problem because you are not just relying on a storage provider saying the data is stored. The chain records an availability proof.
This is why Walrus feels different from a normal storage service. The system is designed so storage can be used like a programmable resource. With Sui involved, apps can build rules around data lifecycle and payments and ownership. That can matter a lot for things like NFTs, games, media platforms, AI apps, and any product that needs large content without losing control.
Let me talk about WAL itself and why it exists. WAL is the native token of the Walrus network. According to Walrus official token documentation, WAL is used for payment for storage, delegated staking for security and node performance, and governance voting on protocol parameters. Users pay WAL to store data for a fixed time and those payments get distributed to storage nodes and stakers over time. Staking is important because nodes compete to attract delegated stake and the system uses staking and incentives to encourage reliability. Governance uses stake weighted voting to steer the protocol. Walrus also describes WAL as deflationary with burn mechanics tied to certain penalties and slashing outcomes.
For supply and distribution, Walrus states a max supply of 5 billion WAL and an initial circulating supply of 1.25 billion WAL. The official distribution breakdown lists 43 percent community reserve, 10 percent user drop, 10 percent subsidies, 30 percent core contributors, and 7 percent investors. They also state that over 60 percent is allocated to the community through airdrops, subsidies, and the community reserve.
On the team side, Walrus was originally developed by Mysten Labs, the same organization that built Sui. Mysten Labs has been widely described as founded by former Meta Diem and Novi engineers including Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, George Danezis, and Kostas Chalkias. Walrus is now supported by the Walrus Foundation, which focuses on growth and adoption.
The project got a lot more attention in March 2025 when multiple outlets reported a 140 million dollar private token sale led by Standard Crypto with participation from a16z crypto and others. That kind of funding usually means two things. First, big investors think the market is real. Second, expectations become very high. Not long after, Walrus mainnet launched on March 27, 2025. Walrus documentation also references a decentralized network of over 100 storage nodes on mainnet, which is a useful signal for network maturity even though decentralization is always something you measure over time.
Now let me ground this in use cases that feel real. One obvious area is NFTs and digital media. Many NFTs point to images and metadata stored off chain and if that off chain storage goes down the NFT loses meaning. The Walrus technical paper discusses how this problem exists and why resilient decentralized storage matters for media integrity. Another big area is AI datasets. Data provenance and integrity is becoming more important because training data can be changed quietly. Walrus talks about authenticity and provenance in that context. Another use case is decentralized websites. Walrus has Walrus Sites, where site files are stored on Walrus while ownership and metadata live in Sui smart contracts. Their public documentation explains that architecture.
For ecosystem signals, I prefer real examples over logo walls. Itheum has talked about working with Walrus for tokenized data and large assets like music and AI models. The Sui Foundation has written about Talus and mentions using Walrus storage in the context of AI agent workflows. Blockdaemon announced support for Walrus on mainnet as infrastructure for the ecosystem. None of these guarantee success, but they show builders are actually touching the tech.
There are also risks I think people should understand clearly. The biggest beginner risk is privacy. If someone uploads sensitive data without encrypting it first, it is not private because Walrus storage is public by default. Another risk is that token incentives need to prove themselves over time. Staking, rewards, penalties, and slashing models can look great on paper and still struggle in real market conditions. And storage is a competitive market. There are many existing decentralized storage systems and also Web2 cloud is extremely strong. Walrus has a clear angle with Sui integration and its encoding approach, but adoption is still the final test.
If I step back and explain how I feel about it, Walrus gives me a practical vibe. It is not trying to be flashy first. It is trying to become a piece of infrastructure that developers rely on because it solves a painful problem. I like that it is honest about what it does and what it does not do, especially on privacy. I also like that it is designed around verifiability with PoA and around efficiency with encoded storage rather than endless replication.
My personal opinion is simple. If Sui keeps growing and more apps need big data that stays available and verifiable, Walrus has a real chance to become one of those quiet systems that everyone uses without thinking about it. That kind of project is rarely the loudest, but it can end up being one of the most important.
