So, how does Walrus solve this? Instead of saving a whole file in one place, #walrus uses a smart technique called erasure coding. Imagine you have a precious document. Walrus doesn't just make a few copies; it transforms the document into many unique, smaller pieces called "slivers." It then spreads these slivers across a vast, global network of independent computers called storage nodes .
The magic is that you only need a subset of these slivers to perfectly rebuild the original document. Even if many nodes go offline or try to withhold data, the network can recover everything. This makes the system incredibly resilient and fault-tolerant . To coordinate this complex process and ensure everyone is playing fair, #walrus is built directly on the Sui blockchain, which acts as the trustless backbone for all the coordination and payments .
A key innovation is their "Red Stuff" encoding. This technology is designed to be incredibly efficient, allowing #walrus to store data at a fraction of the cost of older decentralized storage solutions—some say up to 100 times more efficiently . This focus on being "right size, right price" is core to their mission of making decentralized storage practical for everyone .
