The Walrus Protocol was developed to address core data storage challenges in Web3, where traditional blockchains struggle with large files due to cost and inefficiency.
By combining erasure coding, distributed storage, and on-chain verifiability, Walrus offers an optimized storage solution that rivals existing decentralized projects like Filecoin or Arweave, often with lower costs and faster access.
How Walrus Works
Walrus uses a custom encoding mechanism to divide data into encoded shards and spread them across network nodes, ensuring:
High reliability - data remains retrievable even if many nodes fail, thanks to redundancy and robust recovery protocols.
Fault tolerance - erasure coding and validation mechanisms ensure data integrity.
Smart contract interoperability - stored data becomes programmable and verifiable through Sui’s Move environment.
WAL Tokenomics
Total supply: 5 billion WAL
User airdrop: 10% of tokens allocated to early users and testers
Community reserve: 43%, supporting development and incentives
Contributors & investors: allocated with multi-year vesting schedules to ensure long-term alignment
WAL functions as fuel, governance stake, and reward token, creating an aligned economic system that rewards storage providers and empowers holders to influence the protocol’s trajectory.
Real-World Applications
Walrus is already being used to:
Store NFT media and metadata
Host decentralized websites and apps
Manage AI training datasets
Provide resilient off-chain storage for blockchain state and history
With its mainnet live, growing ecosystem, and community incentives, Walrus is positioning itself as a leading decentralized storage layer that bridges gaps between Web3, AI, and data-centric applications.
