The WAL token in the Walrus Protocol is completely different from most pure governance tokens. It is a truly utility token, and its value comes directly from the network's storage demand.

Want to store data on this network? There's no way around it – you must buy WAL to pay for it. This expenditure from users and applications constitutes the network's "storage fund," which is used long-term to incentivize nodes providing storage services.

Nodes also need to invest. To qualify for receiving orders, they must stake substantial amounts of WAL as collateral. If data loss occurs or service falls short of expectations, the staked tokens will be directly slashed. As the volume of stored data in the network grows exponentially, the staking requirements for nodes continue to increase, which means liquidity in the market is being continuously locked up.

What's more interesting is that through the competitive bidding mechanism for storage space, WAL will gradually exhibit strong deflationary characteristics. This is the so-called "real yield" model – the more the ecosystem develops, the scarcer the token becomes. From an economic model perspective, this design makes the token's value directly tied to the network's actual usage.