The Sui ecosystem welcomes a new decentralized storage solution, Walrus

The decentralized storage network Arweave has successfully achieved a rebound in currency price, ecosystem, and popularity by launching the computing layer AO. Meanwhile, Sui, as a general-purpose computing chain, has launched the decentralized storage network Walrus, which is expected to stir up a new wave in the storage field.

Background Introduction

Team

Walrus is the latest Decentralization storage network product under Mysten Labs. Most of the founders and employees of Mysten Labs come from Meta(, the now-disbanded blockchain project Diem from Facebook). The name Walrus is derived from "walrus," symbolizing the reliability and adaptability of the storage system.

and the relationship with Sui

Walrus is built on Sui, utilizing Sui to coordinate storage space and metadata sales. However, using Walrus does not require developing applications on Sui. Walrus will launch an independent governance token, WAL, as a functional token.

Competitive Analysis

Decentralization storage protocols are mainly divided into two types:

1. Complete copy system: Represents certain well-known storage projects. The advantage is that there are complete files on the storage nodes, and the files can still be accessed even if some nodes go offline. The disadvantage is that the storage cost is high and it may be susceptible to witch attacks.

2. Reed-Solomon(RS) coding system: divides files into small chunks for storage. The advantage is high storage efficiency, while the disadvantage is that encoding and decoding calculations are complex, limiting the file size and the number of participating nodes.

The challenges faced by storage

Existing decentralized storage systems face two major challenges:

1. Continuous verification of whether storage nodes retain data is required, affecting system scalability.
2. Storage nodes need to be coordinated and managed, leading most systems to implement custom blockchains and introduce cryptocurrencies.

Core Innovation

Walrus uses innovative erasure coding technology to quickly encode data into small fragments for distributed storage. Even if most fragments are lost, it can rapidly reconstruct the original data. This method keeps the replication factor between 4-5 times, comparable to existing cloud services, while also providing Decentralization and stronger fault tolerance capability.

Walrus has launched a new 2D coding algorithm called RedStuff, designed specifically for Byzantine fault tolerance. RedStuff is based on fountain codes, combining fast operation and high reliability. It encodes data into primary and secondary slices through simple XOR operations, distributed across storage nodes.

The main advantages of RedStuff include:

• Fast encoding and decoding speed
• Low storage costs
• Scalable to hundreds of nodes
• With high elasticity and fault tolerance

Walrus is also equipped with an efficient committee reconfiguration protocol that ensures continuous data availability. An asynchronous challenge protocol has been introduced to verify node storage, with costs expanding logarithmically with the number of files.

The economic model is based on staking, combined with reward and penalty mechanisms. The innovative storage certification mechanism reduces the cost of storing proof documents.

In summary, Walrus offers a scalable, highly resilient, and cost-effective Decentralization storage solution. Sui provides strong support for Walrus as the control layer.

Potential Airdrop

Walrus will launch an independent token WAL for staking, governance, and more. One of the possible ways to acquire WAL is by holding SUI tokens.

Walrus is about to launch its testnet, with the mainnet launch date to be determined. Currently, you can refer to the official documentation to learn how to use Walrus to deploy websites.