In the security defense system of blockchain, there have always been two different approaches competing. One is based on physical energy consumption—the path taken by Bitcoin and Filecoin. Their logic is straightforward: to create something tamper-proof in the digital world, you must pay real-world physical costs. Want to break the block history of Bitcoin? You need to buy enough chips and burn enough electricity. Want to forge Filecoin's storage proofs? The costs are there, and no one can avoid them. These costs are fixed and rigid; no market fluctuation can change the energy required to break the network.

But the emergence of the Walrus protocol has changed the rules. It represents a complete shift of storage infrastructure towards the second approach—the game theory camp. This is not just a technical iteration; essentially, it is a fundamental change in the security model. Walrus uses an algorithm called Red Stuff, which directly cuts out the costly and resource-intensive parts of storage proofs. What’s the result? The barrier to run a storage node instantly drops to the floor price. You don’t need a data center-level operations team; a home computer with large hard drives or even a high-performance development board can theoretically join the Walrus network and participate.

This seems to realize a decentralized utopia—everyone can participate. But problems also arise. When physical barriers disappear, the foundation of network security is also shaken. What does this shift mean? What will security rely on to be guaranteed? This is the new challenge in front of us.