In the era of Web3, data is the lifeblood of applications-and how that data is stored can make or break the decentralized dream. For years, users have surrendered vast troves of personal and enterprise information to centralized cloud providers, handing control to corporations that monetize and silo it in their servers. This model has led to familiar pain points: single points of failure, censorship risks, opaque governance, and the uneasy realization that our digital lives are often at the mercy of Big Tech. The Web3 movement is built on reversing that power dynamic, demanding storage solutions where data remains in the hands of users and communities. Early decentralized storage networks like Filecoin and Arweave stepped up to fulfill this need, promising something akin to a decentralized Google Cloud where anyone can store and retrieve gigabytes of information without a central gatekeeper. However, as groundbreaking as these protocols have been, they also revealed limitations that kept truly data-intensive Web3 apps waiting on the sidelines. Issues like slow retrieval speeds, complex deal-making for storage, or high upfront costs made some of these systems better for archival use than for powering dynamic, real-time applications. In short, the crypto world has been eager for a faster, more versatile data backbone-one that can support the next wave of decentralized social networks, AI services, media platforms, and beyond. Enter Walrus ($WAL), a rising infrastructure token and protocol that is rapidly positioning itself as the solution to these Web3 data storage challenges.
Walrus launched in 2025 with an ambitious vision: to combine the reliability and scale of cloud storage with the autonomy and transparency of blockchain. Developed by Mysten Labs (the team behind the high-performance Sui blockchain), Walrus made its debut on Sui’s mainnet in March 2025 as a key component of the Sui tech stack. Right from inception, Walrus garnered serious credibility and resources. In an exclusive funding round, the Walrus Foundation raised $140 million by selling its native token $WAL to high-profile investors, including Standard Crypto, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Electric Capital, and even traditional finance players like Franklin Templeton. This private sale valued the project’s total token supply at a hefty $2 billion, reflecting strong investor conviction that Walrus could deliver a “superior version” of decentralized storage compared to predecessors. That confidence largely stems from Walrus’s engineering pedigree and clear improvements on past models. As Standard Crypto’s team noted, prior on-chain storage attempts struggled with scalability, flexibility, and security-precisely the areas Walrus aims to excel. With Mysten Labs’ expertise in building fast, modern blockchains, Walrus was architected from the ground up to tackle these challenges and power the next generation of data-rich Web3 applications.
At its core, Walrus is a decentralized storage and data management protocol that allows any application to seamlessly write, read, verify, and manage data of virtually any type directly on-chain. In practice, this means developers can treat Walrus almost like a decentralized database or file system that’s deeply integrated with smart contracts. On Sui (the blockchain Walrus runs atop), storing and retrieving data via Walrus can be done with on-chain function calls, making it far more programmable than earlier solutions that often required off-chain coordination or separate retrieval protocols. Walrus’s co-founder Evan Cheng has emphasized this advantage, arguing that older decentralized storage networks “are only good for archival storage” and “not programmable” in the way modern Web3 apps demand. By contrast, Walrus was built to be easily composed into decentralized applications: developers can spin up dApps that not only reference data stored on Walrus but actively interact with it, update it, and enforce access controls via smart contracts. This tight coupling of storage and programmability unlocks use cases well beyond simply saving files-now entire data-driven marketplaces, social platforms, and AI agent systems can run with their core data on Walrus, confident that it’s accessible on-chain when and where their code needs it.
Speed and performance are another arena where Walrus shines. Traditional blockchains and earlier storage nets often suffered latency or throughput constraints, making them feel sluggish compared to Web2 cloud services. Walrus, by contrast, inherited Sui’s ethos of high throughput and low latency. Mysten Labs “took that same focus on speed to Walrus,” building a storage network that its founders say is faster than any decentralized alternative on the market. In fact, Walrus’s architecture shards data across numerous storage nodes (Sui’s design allows for thousands of parallel “shards”), enabling lightning-fast reads and writes of very large files for any connected app. The promise is that users can access their data “anytime, anywhere” with minimal delay-a far cry from some earlier decentralized systems where retrieving a file could mean waiting for a peer-to-peer network to respond. This leap in performance addresses one of the chief criticisms of decentralized storage: no one wants a distributed Reddit or metaverse that takes minutes just to load an image or video. Walrus’s high-speed design, leveraging the throughput of the Sui blockchain, ensures data availability in real time. As Evan Cheng bluntly put it, alternative protocols like Filecoin or Arweave are often “very, very slow”, whereas Walrus is built to feel instantaneous. Crucially, Walrus also asserts it can do this at lower cost. “Either they [older protocols] are basically very, very slow, or they are very, very expensive,” Cheng noted, highlighting how Walrus strives to be both fast and cost-efficient. This balance of speed and affordability is central to Walrus’s value proposition: it shouldn’t cost a fortune in fees or time for decentralized apps to handle large-scale data.
How does Walrus manage cost stability while using a volatile token like Wal for payments? The answer lies in an innovative token economic design. When users pay for storage on Walrus, they pay in $WAL, but the protocol smooths out price fluctuations to keep storage fees relatively stable in fiat terms. Essentially, if you upload data, you pay an upfront amount of $WAL to have that data stored for a fixed duration (for example, months or years). Walrus then distributes this payment over time to the network’s storage node operators and stakers as ongoing compensation. This mechanism ensures that even if the price of $WAL swings, the effective cost to the user for storing data remains predictable and fair. In fact, Walrus set aside a significant subsidy fund (10% of the total token supply) precisely to bootstrap the network with attractive pricing. These subsidies allow early users to access storage at below-market rates (in dollar terms) without shortchanging the storage providers, since the protocol tops up provider rewards from its subsidy reserve. It’s a classic Web3 growth strategy: incentivize adoption early on, grow the network effect, and gradually phase out subsidies as organic demand takes over. From the user’s perspective, Walrus’s pricing aims to be competitive with, if not cheaper than, traditional cloud storage-even while providing the added benefits of decentralization and on-chain verifiability. By late 2025, Walrus’s cost structure was proving competitive with existing Web2 solutions, to the point that some users can pay for Walrus-based storage in familiar currencies like dollars or even other chain tokens (SUI, SOL), with $WAL working behind the scenes to power the network. This kind of flexibility lowers the barrier for mainstream users and companies to start using decentralized storage, since they don’t have to navigate token volatility if they prefer not to.
Underpinning Walrus’s technical prowess is the $WAL token itself, which is far more than just a payment medium. Walrus is built on a proof-of-stake model, meaning $WAL plays a critical role in securing the network and aligning incentives. Storage node operators (the servers that actually hold and serve the data shards) must be entrusted by stakeholders who lock up $WAL, a process known as delegated staking. Any $WAL holder can choose to stake their tokens with a node operator, and these stakers then share in the rewards that operators earn for storing data reliably. This approach has two benefits: it broadens participation (you don’t need to run a heavy server yourself to help secure Walrus; you can simply stake with someone who does), and it creates a market for trust among nodes. Operators essentially compete to attract stake by demonstrating performance and reliability, since nodes with more stake backing them will be assigned more data to handle. If a node consistently proves fast and available, stakers are rewarded alongside that node. Conversely, Walrus’s design doesn’t shy away from punishing bad behavior: in future iterations once full slashing is enabled, if a node fails to perform or acts maliciously, a portion of its staked $WAL can be confiscated (slashed). A part of any such slashed stake may even be burned (permanently destroyed) as an added disincentive to misbehave. This creates economic alignment between token holders, storage providers, and users who rely on the data. Everyone has skin in the game to keep Walrus fast, secure, and robust. Even network parameters aren’t left to whim or centralized control; governance in Walrus is driven by $WAL stakes. Node operators, bearing the costs of any underperformance in the network, collectively vote (weighted by stake) on adjusting things like penalty levels and fees. In essence, those with the most at stake in Walrus’s success are given a proportionate say in its rules, ensuring the system can adapt over time while remaining community-driven.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Walrus’s tokenomics-and one that resonates strongly with crypto investors-is its deflationary design. Walrus is structured so that increased usage of the network directly fuels scarcity of the $WAL token. Every time data is stored or transactions occur on Walrus, a small portion of $WAL will be burned by the protocol. This means as more developers and users rely on Walrus for data storage, the supply of $WAL is continuously pressured downward, potentially enhancing long-term value for holders. In late 2025, the Walrus team formally announced that $WAL will become deflationary by design, with each storage transaction burning a bit of the token. Beyond transactions, Walrus is introducing other burn mechanisms tied to network health: for example, if a staker rapidly un-delegates (a short-term stake shift) there’s a penalty fee that is partially burned, discouraging mercenary or destabilizing movements of stake. Likewise, if a staker supports a low-performing node that gets slashed, a portion of that slash is burned as well. These measures serve a dual purpose. First, they create deflationary pressure as the ecosystem grows, meaning early participants are effectively rewarded as their tokens represent a larger share of a shrinking supply. Second, the burn mechanics reinforce good behavior-encouraging long-term staking and diligent selection of reliable nodes, which in turn boosts the network’s overall performance and trustworthiness. In summary, Walrus’s tokenomics are engineered not just to fuel the storage network, but to foster a virtuous cycle: higher network usage drives token scarcity, which can attract more stakeholders and investment into the system, further strengthening the infrastructure.
All the clever design and big promises would be hollow if nobody was actually using Walrus. Fortunately, Walrus’s ecosystem has been booming, validating its approach as more than theory. Since its mainnet launch, a diverse array of crypto projects&spanning NFTs, media, finance, artificial intelligence, and more-have integrated Walrus to handle their data needs. This real-world adoption illustrates why Walrus is gaining mindshare as the infrastructure token for Web3 storage. By the end of 2025, developers had built applications on Walrus that simply would not have been feasible on earlier networks. Consider Autonomous AI agents: a platform called Talus leverages Walrus to let AI agents store, retrieve, and process data entirely on-chain, ensuring the agents’ knowledge stores are transparent and tamper-proof. In the world of digital collectibles, major NFT communities such as Pudgy Penguins tapped Walrus to ensure their artwork and metadata are persistently available and verifiable on-chain, protecting these valuable assets from disappearing due to a centralized server outage. Even established crypto media have turned to Walrus: in a pioneering move, Decrypt, a leading Web3 news outlet, began using Walrus to permanently archive its articles, images, and videos on the Sui blockchain. This creates an unalterable, censorship-resistant repository of journalism, underscoring Walrus’s usefulness in preserving important content for the public record. These examples underscore a pattern: when projects require trustless, high-performance storage for large-scale data, they increasingly look to Walrus as the solution.
One compelling case study is Tusky, a Web3 file sharing and storage application focused on user privacy. Tusky’s mission is to give users true ownership and control of their files-essentially a decentralized, privacy-first alternative to services like Dropbox. Initially, the Tusky team experimented with building on Arweave for permanent on-chain storage, but they hit a wall. Arweave’s model of one-time, upfront payment for perpetual storage brought significant limitations: there was no way to delete or modify files once uploaded, and the high upfront cost to store data forever was prohibitive for onboarding users. This made certain features (like user-controlled file deletion or temporary storage) impossible and deterred many potential customers with sticker shock. Tusky realized they needed a more flexible and sustainable backend. They found it in Walrus. Having followed Walrus since its early test networks, Tusky re-architected their platform on Walrus and *“found that Walrus answered all of [their] needs”*. With Walrus, Tusky can offer both temporary and long-term storage options to their users, rather than a one-size-forever model. If a user wants to store a file for, say, 6 months or 2 years, they can do that and even extend the duration later-something not feasible on Arweave’s permanent ledger. Moreover, Walrus’s high performance and resilience means Tusky’s app feels snappy and reliable. The team noted that with Walrus they could pre-process and encode files such that as soon as a user uploads something, they receive a content ID almost immediately, allowing near-instant retrieval or sharing. This was a huge win for user experience: uploading data to Walrus via Tusky is about as fast and seamless as using a traditional cloud, meeting modern expectations for speed. Cost-wise, Walrus also proved a boon. Tusky reports that Walrus’s cost structure is competitive with traditional cloud storage, enabling them to offer attractive storage rates to customers. Users can even pay in familiar currencies (fiat, or even other crypto like SUI and SOL), lowering friction, while Walrus works in the background to handle Wal tokens. In short, Walrus helped Tusky cut out the heavy upfront costs and inflexibility that hampered their earlier Arweave-based approach. With Walrus, Tusky introduced new features like end-to-end encrypted private vaults for files and fine-grained control over who can access data. Using Walrus’s companion encryption tool, Seal, Tusky lets creators token-gate files-meaning only those holding a specific NFT or token can decrypt and view certain content, all enforced on-chain. This kind of native privacy and access control, which Walrus supports, is a game-changer for building data-rich applications that still respect confidentiality. The results speak for themselves: since migrating to Walrus, Tusky has seen lower costs, greater flexibility, and improved user growth and retention. By eliminating burdensome storage fees and delivering a smoother experience, Tusky attracted more users, validating Walrus as not just a theoretical upgrade but a practical one in the field.
Another example highlighting Walrus’s impact is Itheum, a platform focused on data tokenization for humans and AI agents. Itheum’s vision is to allow people and AI to own and trade data as assets, from personal health metrics to large AI training datasets. Achieving this requires a storage solution that can handle very large files (think gigabytes of video, audio, or model weights) securely and cost-effectively. By partnering with Walrus, Itheum found the ideal data layer to power this vision. Walrus allows Itheum to securely store and exchange massive data assets directly on-chain, solving the reliability and accessibility issues that plague data marketplaces. “We chose Walrus because of its unparalleled ability to handle large file storage with efficiency and resilience,” said Itheum’s CEO, noting that Walrus addresses one of their community’s biggest pain points – providing reliable access to high-quality media and data files without exorbitant costs. In practice, leveraging Walrus means Itheum’s users can tokenize a piece of data (say a high-resolution audio recording or an AI model), store the actual content through Walrus, and trade ownership or access rights knowing that the file itself is always available on a decentralized network. Walrus’s cost-effective, scalable, and highly available storage ensures that even as these data assets are bought and sold, they remain readily retrievable by whoever has permission. Meanwhile, Walrus’s on-chain verification means buyers can trust the provenance and integrity of the data they’re acquiring. This synergy between Itheum and Walrus is a powerful illustration of how Web3 infrastructure tokens like Wal enable entirely new markets: data itself becomes a traded commodity, with Walrus providing the rails to store and move it around without centralized intermediaries. It’s a glimpse of a future where an AI agent might purchase a dataset from another on-chain, transfer the $WAL payment, and immediately gain access to the files via Walrus-no AWS or Dropbox in sight. For crypto investors and enthusiasts, such use cases underscore the scope of Walrus’s ambition: it’s not just about file storage, it’s about reimagining how we treat data as an asset class in the Web3 era.
Walrus’s growing footprint can also be seen in the intersection of media and decentralized finance. The collaboration with Decrypt mentioned earlier paved the way for a novel project called Myriad. Myriad is a multichain prediction market and trading protocol created by the team behind Decrypt Media and Rug Radio, and it has chosen Walrus as its trusted data layer. What does that mean? In Myriad’s platform, users can create and trade prediction markets based on real-world events and information. To ensure full transparency and verifiability, Myriad uses Walrus to store all the media content and data related to each market on-chain. This builds on Decrypt’s initial integration-Decrypt had started by uploading its own articles and videos to Walrus for safekeeping, and now Myriad extends that concept to dynamic market data. Every piece of content (say a news video or an article excerpt) that might inform a prediction market, and even the outcomes of those markets, are put on Walrus where they can’t be tampered with or hidden. The effect is powerful: Myriad transforms information into an asset
