How does decentralization protect user data?
Centralized cloud services such as Google Drive and Amazon S3 are vulnerable to hacker attacks, which can lead to data leaks and data center failures.
Web3 developers are presenting decentralized, fail- and hack-resistant alternatives to cloud services, one of which is the Walrus platform.
What is Walrus?
Walrus is a blockchain protocol designed to securely store digital information in a distributed manner and ensure its integrity. The Walrus protocol is based on the Sui blockchain.
Walrus is focused on providing secure and scalable cloud storage for users and decentralized applications (DApps) that require a high level of reliability and data integrity.
As of April 2025, the Walrus core network (mainnet) has not yet been launched, but the project team plans to do so this year.
How does Walrus work?
One of the main features of the Walrus platform is resilience to data loss: the network is decentralized and does not depend on specific nodes. This means that if one or more nodes go offline, the data stored in the Walrus network will not be lost.
One of the main elements of the Walrus network is large files or so-called "blobs" — a special type of data designed to store large pieces of information. Blobs can store any kind of data:
- images;
- video;
- audio;
- multimedia and other files;
- AI models;
- blockchain history.
In contrast to traditional information systems that rely on full data replication, where copies are stored on only one or a few target servers, Walrus uses advanced file encryption. This protocol reduces the cost of storing large amounts of information.
The protocol is based on an advanced encryption technology called Red Stuff, which uses two-dimensional erasure encryption. Due to this Red Stuff technology allows to store large amounts of data more efficiently than with classical encryption methods, such as noise-resistant encoding of digital signals Reed-Solomon encoding.
Benefits of Walrus
The first advantage of the Walrus protocol is the high security of metadata and file storage, particularly non-interchangeable tokens (NFT), due to decentralization, which ensures the immutability of the information recorded in the system. In other words, data in the Walrus protocol cannot be tampered with, deleted, or modified in any way without the consent of the network participants.
The second benefit is to ensure the authenticity of data for digital systems, which is particularly important in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI). Any data stored in the Walrus protocol is verifiable, and its validity plays a key role in training AI models.
Finally, the third key advantage of the Walrus protocol is efficient and error-tolerant data processing. This allows Walrus technology to provide the scalability required for the efficient operation of various decentralized solutions, such as rollup-based Layer-2 or L2 networks like Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism (OP Mainnet). The solution provided by Walrus helps validators of L2 networks process transactions more efficiently.
Walrus Token
The Walrus project's native token, WAL, was launched and listed on exchanges at the end of March 2025. WAL is a utility token created based on the Coin standard used in the Sui blockchain, which is equivalent to ERC-20 on the Ethereum network.
The Walrus ecosystem uses the WAL token to pay for user data storage services and decentralized applications. Walrus provides network participants who pay in WAL tokens access to data.
The Walrus protocol also uses a staking mechanism that incentivizes WAL token holders to hold the digital asset and maintain the security of the decentralized network, receiving rewards in return.
The WAL token has management functions: its holders can participate in voting on improving the Walrus ecosystem, thereby influencing its development.
A total of 5 billion WALs have been issued, the maximum number of WAL tokens as of April 2025. No new tokens will be released to the market, which will not create additional pressure on the price unless the Walrus community decides otherwise.
According to the CoinMarketCap service for the same period, the value of a WAL token with a market capitalization of $603 million is $0.46, up 4% from the price at the time of listing and 47% lower relative to the absolute high (ATH) seen on the day of listing at $0.87 amid high volatility following the listing.
Conclusion
Walrus has every chance to become one of the key players in the crypto market and seriously compete with centralized services provided by large companies like Alphabet and Amazon.
However, at the moment, the Walrus ecosystem does not have a large enough number of users to assess its prospects and scalability as a large decentralized data warehouse.
