The airdrop gameplay for Walrus in 2025 is a bit different. Unlike other projects that directly distribute tokens, Walrus uses a "Soul Binding NFT" mechanism to identify genuine users. Participants need to bind their SuiNS domain and activate a storage contract to exchange for WAL tokens. This combination not only prevents羊毛党 (arbitrageurs) but also cultivates users' actual usage habits. But behind this, the airdrop is just a bait—Walrus's real goal is to become the data infrastructure in the AI era.

Speaking of the pain points faced by AI projects, data silos are the most troublesome. Training data is scattered across various locations, with difficult rights confirmation and even harder data circulation. Walrus breaks through this with "programmable storage": after data is tokenized, it can flow across chains, with smart contracts ensuring usage permissions. Imagine a medical AI company storing de-identified patient data on Walrus, where only qualified institutions can access it, and each query automatically splits revenue among data providers. This is not just storage but building a data value circulation channel. Currently, Walrus has partnered with Alibaba Cloud Nest, allowing enterprise nodes to deploy within 5 minutes, greatly reducing the onboarding costs for traditional enterprises.

Regarding privacy, Walrus adopts zero-knowledge proof technology, enabling users to complete storage and payment without revealing their identities. This approach aligns with the EU's "AI Act" requirements for data anonymization, and some European medical institutions are already testing Walrus as a replacement for local servers storing patient information.

The current bottleneck is that node distribution is too concentrated, with early investors holding most of the stake. Community governance is needed to expand the network. However, an expected staking annual yield of 8%-15% is enough to attract more independent nodes to participate. Once this number is truly implemented, the decentralization of the ecosystem should significantly improve.