Despite being less talked about but an important advantage of Walrus, its ability to hold long-term storage providers accountable and not just count on their short-term engagement is an important aspect of Walrus. Once a storage provider joins the Walrus system, they are not rewarded just because of their availability to store data. They are rewarded in terms of $WAL units based on their long-term behavior.

Walrus continuously checks if the data feed for the assigned data is available and can be retrieved. A failure in availability tests or constant replica failure leads to a response at a network level for a poor performance provider, with fewer rewards sent for new assignments of storage space based on stifled performance.

Because the assignments of storage are dynamic, reliable providers are gradually saddled with more data, while unreliable ones are naturally squeezed out of the active set. This serves to keep the network quality high, without centralized intervention. Data placement decisions take into consideration performance history; thus, Walrus evolves based on real outcomes rather than static assumptions.

@Walrus 🦭/acc plays a direct role in enforcing this system. Providers are only earning when they are actively maintaining their responsibilities. Any missed checks, degraded uptimes, or unserved data reduce the earnings. This ensures that with Walrus, it is about maintaining the standards of operation over a period and not a one-time setup.

For users who choose to store data, this approach provides minimized risk over the long term. The user's data will not depend on whether one of the companies stays truthful and always remains on the Internet. The network dynamically adjusts how data is to be managed in accordance with network conditions.

Through combining ongoing evaluations, adaptive assignments, and incentives that rely on WAL-based rewards, #walrus is developing a storage network that promotes consistency and weeds out inefficient performance in storage. This improves data reliability with increasing size in the storage network.