Walrus is a decentralized storage and data availability protocol built on the Sui blockchain. It was developed by the Mysten Labs team and is now governed by the Walrus Foundation.
Walrus is designed for large and rich media, from NFT imagery and game assets to AI datasets and full websites.
Unlike regular blob stores, Walrus makes storage programmable: each stored file is represented by a Sui object (with metadata on Sui), so Move smart contracts and transactions can control, route, and pay for storage.
All consensus and coordination (committee formation, staking, etc.) is handled via Sui or the Walrus chain, making the network fully decentralized. Notably, Walrus runs control and metadata on Sui, but its storage layer is chain-agnostic.
Storage is a Move-native resource. Blobs have on-chain IDs and attributes, letting smart contracts read or delete them. Developers can build logic around the data lifecycle (e.g., auto-expiring files).
Walrus has begun rolling out incentive programs to attract early users and operators. On the Testnet, participants could obtain testnet WAL tokens (with no real value) via a faucet.
Walrus aims to redefine how decentralized apps handle data. By making storage a first-class, programmable blockchain resource, it enables new use cases: imagine NFTs with terabytes of mutable data, AI applications with on-chain dataset management, or DeFi systems that incorporate real-world data streams seamlessly.
Looking ahead, the vision is for Walrus to be as foundational as Arweave or IPFS but with on-chain programmability. Integration with Sui’s ecosystem (and Sui’s innovations like zkLogin for easier onboarding) means everyday users could interact with Walrus through simple apps.
As the protocol evolves, we expect growing community involvement: more applications, continuous protocol upgrades, and community events/hackathons fueled by the Community Reserve.
