In the blockchain world, data storage has always been a major challenge. Traditional solutions are prohibitively expensive, with redundancy levels reaching unbelievable heights. Walrus Protocol aims to change this situation — it has built a brand new data layer infrastructure for the Sui ecosystem and even the entire Web3.

The core innovation boils down to two words: cheap and flexible. Using Reed-Solomon erasure coding technology, Walrus reduces storage redundancy from 500x to below 5x, ultimately achieving a cost of only $0.02 per GB per year. What does this mean? Storage costs have dropped by a hundredfold, bridging the cost gap between Web2 and Web3.

But the real highlight is the "dynamic data sovereignty" design. Unlike most storage protocols that are static, Walrus allows users to modify or delete stored data blocks at any time through smart contracts, fully complying with regulatory frameworks like GDPR. Data shifts from being a read-only "archive" to a manageable, live asset — this programmable storage concept is actually very critical.

On the token economy layer, the WAL token serves as both a payment tool and, through a PoS mechanism (staking with an annual yield of 8-15%) and governance voting, tightly links node security, ecosystem development, and user benefits.

Looking ahead, application deployment is already underway. Walrus’s collaboration with Bittensor focuses on distributed training data storage, and Morgan Stanley is testing storage of KYC documents on the test chain — these real-world cases demonstrate that this solution is more than just theoretical on paper.