Author: Alex Liu, Foresight News
WAL Token Airdrop
Recently, the new protocol from Sui developer Mysten Labs — the decentralized storage and data availability protocol Walrus — conducted a token airdrop in the form of NFT distribution. Eligible community members' Sui wallet addresses have received soul-bound (non-transferable) Walrus Airdrop NFTs, which display the number of WAL tokens, granting them the right to claim the corresponding number of WAL tokens when the mainnet launches in March.
This airdrop distributed 4% of the total supply of 5 billion WAL tokens, while another 6% is reserved for future community incentives and ecological distribution. For an introduction to the Walrus protocol, the author recommends reading their article from last September: Interpreting Walrus, Sui's New Decentralized Storage Solution produced by the Sui development team, an independent PoS chain, new governance token WAL, and potential airdrop opportunities.
According to data statistics, approximately 120,000 Sui addresses received the WAL airdrop, with 80% of the addresses holding fewer than 1,000 tokens. There are 142 addresses holding more than 80,000 tokens, and only one address received the maximum airdrop of 100,000 tokens. The eligibility requirements for the airdrop included interactions with the Walrus testnet, native staking of SUI tokens, active DeFi participation on the Sui chain, NFT users, Galaxy activity users, and participation in meme contests hosted by Walrus.
My main Sui address received over 90,000 tokens, ranking in the top 100 among all Sui addresses, barely maintaining the persona of someone "deeply involved in the Sui ecosystem."
WAL Token Address Distribution Statistics
Market Capitalization Comparison: From FIL, AR to Mysten Labs Ecosystem
In the storage protocol field, Filecoin (FIL) and Arweave (AR) have already established impressive market capitalizations. FIL has built a vast ecosystem for data storage and retrieval, while AR is favored in the market for its permanent storage solution.
Currently, FIL has a market capitalization of approximately $2 billion, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of about $6 billion, while AR has a market capitalization and FDV of around $600 million. If we benchmark against FIL's fully diluted valuation, WAL's price could potentially exceed $1; if we benchmark against AR, WAL's price would be around $0.1. The disparity between the two is significant; which project is closer to Walrus's potential price?
Although Walrus has just started, it has strong support from Sui developer Mysten Labs, and we can look for clues in the token performance of other projects from Mysten Labs.
NS is a domain protocol on Sui, with an FDV that reached $300 million on its launch day. DEEP is a liquidity protocol on Sui, which had an FDV of only $200 million at launch, but subsequently surged violently, with its FDV peaking near $3.5 billion, and currently maintaining around $1.5 billion after a correction.
From my observations, Mysten Labs' support for Walrus appears to exceed that for SuiNS and Deepbook, as their official Twitter account lists Sui and Walrus side by side in the account profile. Based on this, it is highly likely that WAL's market capitalization will not be lower than that of DEEP, which did not receive such treatment, indicating that WAL's price will be above $0.3.
Editor's Fantasy Time
In addition to being a decentralized storage protocol, Walrus is also a data availability (DA) protocol. If we benchmark against the star product in this field, Celestia's token TIA, the WAL token price could exceed $0.7. The most optimistic members of the Sui community have even stated, "Walrus = Filecoin + Celestia." If this model holds, WAL's price could reach over $2 — allowing the editor to rely on the airdrop to avoid working for several years. One can only hope that this dream comes true.
Valuation Conclusion and Outlook
By comparing high market capitalization storage projects like FIL and AR, and considering the additional premium brought by Mysten Labs' strong support and the current market environment, the reasonable price for the WAL token may be between $0.3 and $0.6 USDT. If the opening airdrop faces significant selling pressure and drops below $0.2 USDT, I would consider buying; if the market is extremely optimistic and exceeds $0.8 USDT, I will sell most of my tokens.
WAL's pre-market price on Sui's PinataBot is approximately $0.3, with shallow market liquidity; this price is for reference only.
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