Walrus Foundation - the organization behind the decentralized storage protocol Walrus - just announced a successful funding round of 140 million USD from leading investment funds, including Standard Crypto, a16z, Franklin Templeton Digital Assets, and many other big names. With this funding, Walrus aims to revolutionize decentralized data storage through Sui's blockchain technology, promising to solve issues of speed, cost, and data programmability.
Walrus raises massive funding, preparing to launch Mainnet
The funding round led by Standard Crypto, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Crypto, Electric Capital, Franklin Templeton Digital Assets, Creditcoin, Lvna Capital, Protagonist, Karatage, RW3 Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, and The Raptor Group. Notably, instead of raising funds through equity, Walrus Foundation sold WAL tokens to raise funds, indicating the project's decentralized finance (DeFi-first) financial strategy.
Walrus also confirmed that the official mainnet will launch on March 27, 2025, marking a significant advancement in decentralized storage capabilities, especially for blockchain applications, AI data, rich media files, and on-chain websites.
WAL Token: Resource allocation for the ecosystem
#walrus has announced details on the tokenomics of #WAL , with a total supply of 5 billion units and an initial circulating supply of 1.25 billion WAL. Key allocations include:
10% (500 million WAL): Airdrop for initial users and the community.
43% (2.15 billion WAL): Community reserves, developer funding, hackathons, and ecosystem expansion initiatives.
30% (1.5 billion WAL): Rewards for the core team and significant contributors.
10% (500 million WAL): Support for storage nodes to ensure reasonable transaction fees.
7% (350 million WAL): Allocated for investors in this funding round.
The strong allocation to the community and developer support shows that Walrus wants to build a long-term ecosystem rather than just focusing on short-term investor interests.
Walrus
can do better than Filecoin and Arweave?
The decentralized storage field is not new, with the dominance of Filecoin ($FIL ) and Arweave ($AR ) platforms. However, Walrus believes they have an advantage due to features:
Higher data processing speed: Leveraging blockchain $SUI significantly helps Walrus to be faster than Filecoin and Arweave.
Lower costs: Thanks to data optimization mechanisms, Walrus promises to reduce storage costs compared to current platforms.
On-chain data programming: Allows direct manipulation of data through Move smart contracts, rather than just passive storage like Filecoin.
Comments from investors
Adam Goldberg (Standard Crypto): “Previous blockchain storage solutions have faced issues with speed, cost, and scalability. Walrus can become the internet-scale storage platform for the blockchain world.”
Evan Cheng (CEO Mysten Labs): “Current platforms are either too slow or too expensive. Walrus addresses both of these issues.”
The role of the new CEO and future strategy
A month before the funding round, Walrus appointed Rebecca Simmonds as CEO. She was a founding member of Vega Protocol, a decentralized DeFi platform. Rebecca is expected to help Walrus reposition the decentralized storage industry, especially in the context of blockchain increasingly needing fast, secure, and programmable storage solutions.
In addition, Walrus is also collaborating with Talus and Sui to develop on-chain AI Agent solutions, promising to usher in a new era for intelligent data management.
Conclusion
Walrus Foundation is challenging Filecoin and Arweave with a faster, cheaper, and smarter decentralized storage platform. With 140 million USD in investment from top funds, coupled with deep integration with the Sui blockchain, Walrus has the potential to become the new standard in the blockchain data storage industry.
However, the success of the project will depend on the ability to deploy mainnet by 2025, as well as the development speed of the ecosystem around the WAL token. If everything goes according to plan, Walrus could become the 'Ethereum of the decentralized storage industry.'