WALRUS: Design motivations and how they map to product goals
• Stabilize fiat storage costs: by collecting WAL up-front and distributing it over time to operators, Walrus aims to decouple short-term WAL price swings from the fiat cost of storage — the site calls this a mechanism to keep storage costs stable in fiat terms. The effectiveness depends on the chosen pricing oracles/pegging mechanics and how quickly markets reprice WAL.
• Reduce churn and migration costs: penalties on rapid stake shifts aim to discourage “stake-surfing” that forces expensive data migrations between nodes. That aligns economic incentives toward longer-term node commitments.
• Bootstrap network: a 10% subsidy pool + large community allocations (63% when combining community reserve, drop, subsidies) emphasize aggressive go-to-market incentives for node operators and users early on.