Walrus is one of those projects I only really understood after looking at where most Web3 apps actually store their data.
Everyone says “decentralized,” but then you realize the files still sit on a normal server somewhere. Images, user content, game data all of it. If that server goes down or changes rules, the app is basically stuck. That always felt like a quiet weakness to me.
Walrus tries to fix that by giving $SUI its own storage layer. Not something fancy to look at, just something that works. Big files don’t get shoved on-chain. They’re stored using blob storage, then split up and spread across the network so no single node controls anything. Even if some nodes drop off, the data can still be rebuilt.
WAL is what holds the whole thing together. It’s used for staking, governance, and incentives so storage providers actually stay online and do their job. No company in the middle. No “trust us” cloud setup.
It’s not flashy, and that’s probably why most people ignore it. But if apps are going to last longer than a hype cycle, they need somewhere stable for their data to live. That’s where Walrus makes sense to me.
