Many people casually categorize Walrus (WAL) as a "replacement for IPFS or Filecoin," but they completely miss its core advantages.

It appears to be a storage project, but the technical approaches are vastly different. IPFS is just a content addressing protocol with no incentive mechanism; Filecoin and Arweave, although incorporating economic models, are independent networks. Interacting with smart contracts requires cross-chain bridges, adding complexity.

Walrus, on the other hand, is directly built into the Sui public chain. Blob data is registered on-chain as Sui objects, and Move contracts can directly reference, transfer, and combine them. Here are some key benefits:

**Data and on-chain state are integrated.** For example, NFT metadata can be directly written as "metadata=Blob(0xAbc...)", eliminating the need for centralized URLs.

**More granular permission control.** Move's resource model is inherently non-copyable and non-forgeable, ensuring data security.

**Much higher performance.** Sui's parallel processing allows thousands of nodes to respond simultaneously, with a 1GB file reconstruction delay of only 1.8 seconds. In comparison, the Filecoin oracle + cross-chain approach is less efficient.

This is the true competitive edge of Walrus—not to replace anyone, but to offer a new way of native storage on public chains.