The arms race in storage costs is becoming increasingly intense in the crypto ecosystem.

Filecoin requires a 25x replication factor to ensure security, while Arweave stacks permanent storage with 100-1000x replication, directly pushing costs into astronomical numbers. Walrus protocol uses a clever approach—RedStuff 2D encoding technology—to reduce the replication factor to 4-5x, instantly boosting efficiency.

This encoding scheme is based on fountain codes. It sounds complex, but the core logic is simple: using XOR operations to shard data and store it across network nodes. The key advantage is strong fault tolerance—even if two-thirds of nodes fail simultaneously, the system can quickly reconstruct the original data. The security level can reach the "twelve nines" standard, which is top-tier in distributed storage.

Data comparison is more intuitive: storing 1TB of data for a year costs only $50, compared to Arweave's $3,500, a 98% reduction. Approaching the price level of centralized cloud services, what does this mean? On-chain storage has shifted from a "luxury" to a "commodity."

Behind Walrus is Mysten Labs, the team behind the Sui blockchain. They have deeply integrated Walrus into the Sui ecosystem, enabling stored data to have programmable capabilities. On-chain NFT metadata rights, smart contract and off-chain data interaction, storage of complex computation results—scenarios that were previously too costly—have suddenly become feasible.

The ecosystem token WAL plays three roles: staking, governance, and payments. Currently, 80TB of testnet storage data is already running, and the benefits of technical validation are gradually being realized. From the lab to the real network, this step is being taken very steadily.