On Walrus mainnet today, credential blobs are being renewed on schedule. Others are allowed to expire. WAL is consumed either way. That is not an abstract claim. It is the observable behavior behind Humanity Protocol’s migration of more than ten million credentials onto Walrus. Identity data is not being uploaded and forgotten. It is being kept alive deliberately, epoch by epoch, or dropped when it no longer needs to exist.
The single Walrus primitive doing the work here is **blob expiry and renewal**. Humanity Protocol stores credential data as blobs on Walrus with explicit lifetimes. Each credential batch is uploaded, encoded, distributed to a committee, and kept available only as long as WAL continues to pay for it. If a credential is revoked, superseded, or no longer needed, its blob is not renewed. Walrus enforces this mechanically. There is no soft delete and no lingering cache.
In practice, this changes how decentralized identity behaves. Traditional identity systems assume permanence by default. Once data exists, it accumulates indefinitely. Walrus forces Humanity Protocol to decide which credentials deserve continued availability. Active credentials are renewed continuously. Expired or revoked credentials are allowed to lapse. The system does not rely on trust or cleanup scripts. The absence of WAL payment ends availability.
Walrus makes this manageable at scale because renewal is predictable. Credentials are grouped into blobs sized for operational use, not theoretical limits. Batches are renewed per epoch based on usage signals. If a verifier is actively checking a class of credentials, those blobs stay alive. If verification demand drops, renewal stops. The identity layer stays lean because Walrus charges rent for every byte kept available.
Availability is verifiable, not assumed. During each epoch, Walrus nodes serving Humanity credential blobs respond to availability challenges. They prove they still hold their assigned fragments. If they fail, stake is at risk. This matters for identity because verifiers do not want promises. They want proof that credentials are retrievable now, not hypothetically. Walrus gives Humanity Protocol that assurance without copying full datasets across the network.
This is also where tamper resistance becomes operational. Once a credential blob is stored on Walrus, its content hash and metadata are anchored through Sui objects. If someone tries to substitute data, retrieval fails. If someone tries to claim availability without storing data, challenges catch it. Walrus does not protect identity through secrecy. It protects it through enforced availability and immutability during the blob’s lifetime.
For developers integrating Humanity Protocol, the behavior is concrete. Verification logic can check whether a credential blob exists and is retrievable in the current epoch. Revocation logic simply stops renewal. There is no separate revocation list to maintain and no race condition between storage and verification. Walrus collapses storage state and identity state into the same clock. Epochs decide truth.
There is a limitation that cannot be softened. If Humanity Protocol mismanages renewal schedules, credentials can disappear earlier than intended. Imagine a batch of credentials tied to long-running reputation scores that accidentally lapses. Walrus does not distinguish between mistake and intent. The blob expires. Verifiers fail to retrieve it. The protocol behaved correctly. The error lives entirely in renewal logic. Walrus rewards teams that treat identity data as time-bound infrastructure, not static records.
The broader consequence is visible without speculation. Sybil resistance depends on the ability to verify credentials reliably in the present, not to archive them forever. Walrus supports that by making credential availability a paid, enforced state. Reputation systems built on Humanity Protocol can rely on data that is both verifiable and intentionally maintained. When credentials lose relevance, they stop consuming resources. The network does not carry dead weight.
The opening action was simple. Credential blobs were renewed. Others were not. WAL moved accordingly. The closing observation follows directly. On Walrus, identity stops being a permanent artifact and becomes a maintained process. Humanity Protocol’s credentials exist because someone keeps them alive. That is what makes them trustworthy.
