No.321
Walrus WAL
the data-blob archivist
🎭 Shred a file into a thousand pieces, scatter them across the herd, lose most of them, and the whole thing still comes back.
💬 “Hand me a file too big for any one machine and I'll cut it into a thousand shards, scatter them across the colony, and still belch the whole thing back even after most of them are lost. Storage is my whole job, and I'm built to forget nothing.”
- What it is: a decentralized storage network for big files, media, AI datasets, blockchain archives, kept across many independent nodes.
- Who built it: Mysten Labs, the team behind the Sui blockchain. Walrus is Sui's storage layer.
- The trick: a coding method called Red Stuff splits files into shards, so the file survives even when most shards go missing.
- The token: WAL pays for storage and is staked to secure the network. Max supply is 5 billion, not fixed like Bitcoin.
📖 The Story
June 18, 2024. Mysten Labs, the same team that built the Sui blockchain, unveiled a developer preview of Walrus. Their complaint was simple: putting big files on a blockchain is wildly wasteful. The usual way is to copy the whole file onto every node, roughly a hundred copies, just so it can never be lost. That is fine for tiny records but absurd for videos, model weights, and chain archives.
Walrus answered with a heavyweight whose only job is to remember. Instead of storing a hundred full copies, it shreds each file into encoded shards and spreads them across the colony of staking nodes. Even if a huge share of those shards goes missing, the file rebuilds from what is left. That cuts the storage burden from about 100x down to roughly 4x or 5x.
Early 2025. The Walrus Foundation raised about $140 million in a private token sale led by Standard Crypto, with a16z crypto and Electric Capital joining in. The money signaled that serious investors saw cheap, durable, decentralized storage as a missing piece of the on-chain world.
March 27, 2025. Walrus went live. Its mainnet launched, the WAL token was listed, and the network was described as fully decentralized. The archivist opened its doors, and developers could start handing it files, including a feature called Walrus Sites that hosts whole websites with no central server behind them.
📊 Stats
🧩 How it works
The heart of Walrus is an erasure-coding method called Red Stuff. A file (a “blob”) is split into many small encoded pieces called slivers, and those slivers are scattered across independent nodes. The clever part: the file can be rebuilt even when up to about two-thirds of the slivers are gone. So no single node holds anything precious, and losing a big chunk of the network still loses nothing.
Walrus handles the heavy storage, but it leans on Sui for the bookkeeping. Coordination, payments, and staking all run as smart contracts on Sui. Think of Sui as the front desk that signs people in and takes payment, and Walrus as the giant archive in the back.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Stores big files for a fraction of the usual cost, about 4x to 5x copies instead of 100x, while still surviving heavy node loss
- Backed by Mysten Labs, the proven Sui team, and a ~$140M raise from well-known crypto investors
- Built for the modern wave of needs, AI datasets, agent storage, media, and even fully on-chain websites via Walrus Sites
- Very young. Mainnet only went live in March 2025, so its long-term reliability is still unproven
- It is not its own chain, it depends on Sui for payments and coordination, so Sui's troubles become Walrus's troubles
- Crowded field. Filecoin, Arweave, and Storj already chase the same goal, and WAL must earn real paying usage to matter
- Token supply is large (5 billion cap) with most still locked, so unlocks over time can weigh on the price
🧬 Evolution lineage
Walrus is not a fork of anything. It is a sibling built by the same hands as Sui, Walrus stores the files while Sui handles the coordination. Filecoin, Arweave, and Storj are conceptual peers chasing the same storage goal, not part of Walrus's family.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Walrus?
- A decentralized storage network for big files, media, AI datasets, blockchain archives, spread across many independent nodes instead of one company's servers. The WAL token pays for storage and is staked to help secure the network.
- Who built Walrus?
- Mysten Labs, the same team behind the Sui blockchain. Walrus is the storage layer of the Sui Stack and runs its coordination, payments, and staking on Sui. Its mainnet launched on March 27, 2025.
- How does Walrus store files so cheaply?
- It uses an erasure-coding method called Red Stuff. A file is split into many encoded pieces called slivers, scattered across nodes. The file rebuilds even if up to about two-thirds of the slivers are missing, so it keeps roughly 4x to 5x copies instead of the 100x of naive replication.
- How many WAL are there?
- Max supply is 5 billion WAL, with 1.25 billion (25%) circulating at launch. Over 60% is set aside for the community, 30% for core contributors, and 7% for private investors. It is not a fixed-emission coin like Bitcoin, and some burn mechanisms are planned.
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only