@Walrus 🦭/acc @CoinTag #walrus $WAL 乘Sui
When the Sui ecosystem became a focal point on Wall Street due to the ETF application frenzy, the value of its underlying infrastructure is being redefined. As the leading programmable storage solution within the ecosystem, walrusprotocol is driving the explosive growth of the $WAL token through a triple advantage of technological innovation, ecosystem expansion, and a deflationary model. In the fiercely competitive decentralized storage landscape of 2026, this $200 million valuation project, which has secured $140 million in funding, is proving through tangible results that true value storage will ultimately return to user sovereignty and technical excellence.
On the technical level, Walrus has completely solved the pain points of traditional storage solutions, establishing an irreplaceable technological barrier. Addressing the industry's chronic issues of high costs and low efficiency for small file storage, its Quilt batch storage solution is a revolutionary breakthrough—by integrating multiple small files into a single unit storage, the storage cost of a 10KB file drops by 420 times, and the cost of a 100KB file decreases by 106 times, while significantly reducing the Gas fees billed in SUI, achieving both economic efficiency and high performance for high-frequency small file storage such as NFT media, AI model fragments, and log data. The Seal protocol constructs a programmable access control system that supports on-chain privacy permission management, paired with the native private transaction feature set to launch on Sui in 2026, making Walrus a storage solution that balances privacy protection and compliance audits, perfectly suited for sensitive data scenarios in finance and healthcare. By early 2026, Walrus has already carried over 800+ TB of encoded data and 14 million storage units, becoming the preferred storage base for hundreds of projects, highlighting the stability and scalability of its technical architecture.
In terms of ecological layout, Walrus is centered on the Sui ecosystem, achieving comprehensive penetration across domains and scenarios. As a key infrastructure of the Sui ecosystem, it has not only achieved deep integration with OpenGradient, becoming its exclusive storage hub for a decentralized AI platform, supporting the hosting and privacy protection of over 100 AI models, but has also successfully attracted top Web3 IPs and projects such as Pudgy Penguins, Decrypt, and Itheum to migrate, covering diverse scenarios including NFT media libraries, news archives, and AI agent file tokenization. To further activate ecological creativity, the Walrus Foundation has launched an RFP proposal program to provide funding support for innovative projects such as decentralized publishing platforms and static website generators, and continues to attract talent through global hackathons and developer training events, building a complete ecological closed loop of "technical support + funding assistance + scenario implementation." With the expectation of Sui ETF landing heating up, the influx of compliant funds will provide Walrus with broader ecological expansion space, allowing it to transition from internal Sui ecosystem to cross-chain storage infrastructure.
The ingenious design of the token economic model provides solid support for the long-term value of WAL. Unlike the financing-oriented distribution of traditional projects, Walrus allocates more than 60% of WAL tokens to the community, with 10% specifically set aside for user airdrops (valued at about $200 million), a scale that even surpasses the 7% allocation ratio for investors, demonstrating the project's emphasis on community co-construction. More critically, its built-in deflationary mechanism: every storage transaction will destroy a portion of WAL, the higher the ecological activity, the greater the token destruction, forming a value positive cycle of "usage equals deflation"; at the same time, rules like short-term staking penalties and reductions for low-performance node staking further reduce circulating supply, reinforcing the scarcity of WAL. With endorsements from top institutions such as a16z and Binance Labs, the current market capitalization of $WAL at $500 million still presents a significant value gap compared to a full circulation valuation of $2 billion.
From the perspective of industry trends, decentralized storage is the core track of Web3 infrastructure, and the rise of the Sui ecosystem provides Walrus with an excellent development opportunity. As Sui's TVL gradually recovers, with daily active users stabilizing around 600,000 and the continuous expansion of compliant payment scenarios, the storage demand within the ecosystem will grow exponentially. As a benchmark for storage within the ecosystem, Walrus not only enjoys the traffic dividend of the Sui ecosystem but also empowers ecological development through technological innovation, forming a virtuous cycle of mutual benefit. Whether it is the trend of integration between AI and Web3 or the demand from traditional institutions for compliant Web3 infrastructure, both open up incremental market space for Walrus.
In 2026, the cryptocurrency market will see value recovery become the main theme. Walrus protocol, through cost reduction and efficiency enhancement via technological innovation, a multi-faceted ecological layout, and a deflation-driven economic model, is becoming a potential dark horse in the decentralized storage track. For investors, WAL is not only a quality asset to participate in the dividends of the Sui ecosystem but also a core choice for laying out the future of Web3 infrastructure. With the continuous implementation of ecological applications and ongoing optimization of the token model, Walrus is expected to reshape the value landscape of the storage track, and the value explosion of WAL may just be beginning.