When I look at most crypto projects, I usually ask myself one thing first. Is this solving a real problem people actually have, or is it just a good story. Walrus feels different to me because it focuses on something Web3 keeps bumping into again and again. Storing real data at scale without depending on a single company.
Walrus is basically built for big files. Not tiny transactions or small bits of text, but real things like videos, images, PDFs, game assets, app files, and even large datasets. It runs alongside Sui, which helps coordinate and verify what is stored, while the storage network does the heavy lifting in the background.
The part I like is how they handle reliability. Instead of storing full copies everywhere, Walrus breaks a file into encoded pieces and spreads those pieces across many nodes. So even if a chunk of nodes goes offline, the file can still be recovered. To me, that is a more realistic approach because networks are never perfect, and strong systems are the ones that still work when things go wrong.
Another thing that stands out is that storage is not treated like a dead folder where you throw files and forget about them. Walrus tries to make storage something apps can interact with. So if a dApp needs to prove a file exists, keep it available, renew it, link it to a token, or build features around access and ownership, the design is meant to support that.
That is why the use cases start to make sense. People can host decentralized websites, keep NFT media alive without relying on a single server, store AI data and datasets in a more open way, and build apps where data feels owned instead of rented. I can see why this matters for creators too, because a lot of digital work today lives on platforms that can change rules anytime.
WAL fits into all of this as the fuel of the system. If someone stores data, they pay in WAL. If nodes provide storage and keep data available, they earn rewards. Staking also helps decide which nodes get trusted roles, and governance gives the community a way to tune the network as it grows.
My honest feeling is that Walrus is not the loudest project, but it is the kind of thing the whole space quietly needs. If Web3 wants to feel normal for regular users, it has to handle storage in a way that is cheap, reliable, and hard to censor. Walrus looks like it is aiming directly at that, and I respect that focus.