Looking at the decentralized storage ecosystem, it can be imagined as a globally under-construction archive. Those large warehouse clusters like FIL have enormous capacity, but their data retrieval response speeds are not always ideal. The permanent storage player AR is like a record engraved in granite—once written, it cannot be erased, but it has limitations in cost and flexibility.

Later, Walrus took a completely different approach. Instead of building physical space, it set up a "liquid storage" system. By using fragmentation algorithms to disperse data across the entire network, it appears scattered but can be retrieved instantly. The underlying logic of this approach completely overturns the ideas of the previous two generations.

Now, it’s January 2026. How should we view the value of WAL? The key isn’t how many TB it can store, but how much "throughput efficiency" it can provide within the SUI ecosystem and high-frequency decentralized applications. Looking at the data: FIL, as the industry leader, has a fully diluted valuation around $12 billion; AR, focused on permanent storage, fluctuates near $5 billion. The market performance after Walrus’s launch truly hinges on its ability to handle dynamic data.

From a technical perspective, Walrus uses the Redstuff erasure coding scheme, which is nearly at its efficiency limit. A comparison makes it clear—retrieving a file on FIL might require waiting for the retrieval process and node responses; on WAL, the architecture design makes retrieval a matter of seconds. This is not a small optimization; it’s a different dimension of design philosophy.