Author: Frank, PANews

The decentralized storage protocol Walrus has recently completed a $140 million financing round, led by Standard Crypto, with participation from institutions such as a16z crypto and Electric Capital, making it the largest financing amount among recent on-chain projects.

As an old narrative, decentralized storage has still managed to secure such a scale of financing in the current market environment, sparking discussions within the industry. From Walrus's perspective, it is not only attempting to reshape the decentralized storage track by reducing costs by a hundredfold but also represents Mysten Labs' new layout to upgrade Sui's performance and optimize its token economics.

Walrus May Reduce Decentralized Storage Costs by 100 Times

According to official information, Walrus is a decentralized storage and data availability protocol designed to provide secure and efficient storage solutions for large files and unstructured data. It is developed by the Sui development team, Mysten Labs, and built on the Sui blockchain, aiming to revolutionize data management in decentralized networks.

From a technical standpoint, Walrus's core technology is erasure coding, which splits data into smaller units (slivers) and distributes them across multiple storage nodes. This method can recover data even if up to two-thirds of the nodes fail, ensuring high availability and reliability.

The more significant practical implication of this innovation may lie in cost. By relying on erasure coding technology, Walrus has reduced its replication factor to 4-5 times, significantly lowering storage costs and approaching the efficiency of centralized cloud services. In comparison, Filecoin's replication factor is about 25 times, while Arweave's can reach 100-1000 times. Based on this calculation, Walrus's storage costs could be 80-100 times lower than those of Filecoin and Arweave. Additionally, due to file-splitting limitations, Walrus is also suitable for applications requiring large volumes of data, such as AI datasets and media files.

According to SuperEx's estimates, for 1TB of data, Arweave's annual storage cost is about $3,500, while Filecoin's costs range from $200 to $1,000, and Walrus only requires $50.

As of March 23, data shows that approximately 80TB of data storage has been conducted on Walrus's testnet, with over 13.45 million total addresses. Additionally, there are already 109 projects running on the testnet, many of which are native projects of Walrus. The project types are mainly mini-games, and it has attracted well-known institutions such as Tusky, Decrypt Media, and Chainbase for collaboration.

The "Turbocharger" of the Sui Ecosystem, 1EB Storage Goal = 15% SUI Token Burn

Of course, in today's market environment, it seems challenging to gain high recognition from capital solely based on technological innovation narratives. For Walrus, another reason for achieving substantial financing may be its origin from Mysten Labs. As the development team of the Sui network, Mysten Labs had completed $336 million in financing before the launch of the Sui network. The lead investors in Walrus, Standard Crypto, a16z crypto, and Electric Capital, have also appeared on the investor list for Sui.

In Walrus's launch statement, it can be seen that the initiative originated from the need to upgrade storage issues within the Sui network. After Walrus went live, it alleviated the storage pressure on the Sui network by providing efficient decentralized storage solutions.

Furthermore, according to a report from SuperEx, each stored blob in Walrus requires the creation of a metadata object on Sui, which consumes SUI tokens as gas fees. If Walrus's usage increases to 1EB (exabyte), it is expected to consume about 240 million SUI annually (accounting for 15% of the current circulation), indirectly impacting the network economy. By the fourth quarter of 2024, Filecoin's total storage capacity is expected to be around 4.2EB.

In March, Mysten Labs also announced the acquisition of the Web3 gaming infrastructure startup Parasol. Combined with the performance improvements of Walrus, the Sui network may soon focus on AI and gaming.

This significant capital influx seems to remind the market that decentralized storage remains a promising market. According to a report by Codex.Storage in December 2024, the decentralized storage market is expected to see further expansion in 2025 as AI expands and more enterprises adopt hybrid cloud solutions.

$80 Million Airdrop Issued Through NFTs

The massive financing has led the market to believe that Walrus could become another major airdrop player. WAL is the native token of Walrus, with a maximum supply of 5 billion and an initial circulating supply of 1.25 billion. Walrus's official announcement indicates that over 60% of WAL will be used for the community. However, a closer examination reveals that this does not mean a high initial airdrop ratio. It is stated that a total of 10% of the tokens will be used for user airdrops, with 4% allocated before the mainnet launch and 6% after the mainnet launch. Additionally, 43% of the tokens are reserved for community reserves, which will be used for the long-term development and growth of the Walrus ecosystem, including community funding and planning, developer support, core research of Walrus, incentive programs, community activities, hackathons, and other ecological projects, managed by the Walrus Foundation. The mainnet is expected to launch on March 27.

Investors will receive a total of 7% of the share, which will begin to unlock 12 months after the mainnet launch. Based on the $140 million financing corresponding to a 7% token share, the cost per WAL for investors is approximately $0.4. The valuation of WAL has reached $2 billion, compared to Filecoin's current fully diluted market cap of about $6 billion.

Currently, the 4% of tokens allocated before the mainnet launch have already been distributed to users participating in the testnet in the form of NFTs, while the remaining 6% airdrop share will be distributed after the launch through community incentives and ecological participation.

As the Web3 world continues to explore the ultimate form of storage, Walrus is carving a new path with its combination of "erasure coding + low replication factor." This is not only a revolution in storage costs but also a paradigm shift in the self-iteration of the Sui ecosystem—by transforming storage consumption into an economic engine of SUI tokens, Walrus is weaving a multidimensional value network covering data storage, on-chain interaction, and AI training.

With the advancement of the 1EB storage goal, this colossal entity consuming 15% of circulating tokens may become the best driver for the growth of the Sui public chain. In the explosive demand for AI data in 2025, can Walrus's hundredfold cost advantage leverage the hundred billion dollar cloud storage market? The answer may lie in the storage curve at the launch of the mainnet.

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