Walrus is designed with one clear goal: making decentralized data storage reliable in an unpredictable world. In distributed networks, nodes can go offline, fail, or act maliciously. Walrus assumes this reality and builds protection directly into its core architecture rather than treating data loss as an edge case.
At the heart of this design is erasure coding. Instead of storing full copies of data across multiple nodes, Walrus breaks each file into smaller pieces called shards. These shards are mathematically encoded so the original data can be reconstructed even if some pieces are missing.
This approach means Walrus does not need every shard to remain available at all times. As long as a minimum number of shards exist on the network, the data can be fully recovered. This dramatically improves fault tolerance and ensures data remains accessible during outages or attacks.
Erasure coding also makes Walrus far more efficient than traditional replication-based storage systems. Replication requires storing the same data repeatedly, which increases storage costs and network load. Walrus achieves stronger durability while using significantly less storage.
Security benefits naturally follow. Since no single node holds the complete data, compromising one node reveals nothing meaningful. Data protection becomes a built-in property of the system rather than an added security layer.
In practice, erasure coding allows Walrus to deliver a storage network that is resilient, efficient, and secure by default. By distributing risk and eliminating single points of failure, Walrus ensures data remains protected, available, and future-proof in a decentralized environment.