What has the Walrus project been up to lately? Evolving from a dedicated storage solution in the Sui ecosystem to a foundational infrastructure for all of Web3, there are several hardware metrics behind it that are worth clarifying.

Let's start with the technical aspects. After adopting a 2D erasure coding scheme, the replication factor has been reduced to 4-5 times—compared to traditional storage solutions that require 25 to 1000 times. The magnitude of this difference needs no further explanation. Data recovery costs can be as low as O(B/n), and full network synchronization only consumes O(B) bandwidth, translating to approximately $50 per year for 1TB. For comparison: Filecoin is 75% more expensive, Arweave is 98.6% more expensive. Performance metrics now rival centralized cloud storage, especially friendly for large-scale Blob files.

The design of programmable storage is particularly interesting. Storage objects are directly equivalent to on-chain programmable assets, managed dynamically via Move contracts. NFT metadata can be updated in real-time, assets in blockchain games can be reused across scenarios, and copyright revenue sharing can be automated—improving efficiency by a factor of 30. This is not just storage functionality; it’s more like laying the foundational data infrastructure for the Sui ecosystem.

Their cross-chain ambitions are also clear: not limited to Sui, they aim to serve as a data layer for other public chain Rollups, capable of handling AI training data, high-definition media, and DApp frontends. Essentially, they want to become the public "storage + data circulation" infrastructure for Web3.

Looking at the implementation data: the mainnet has expanded from 7 epochs to 103 storage operators, with 121 nodes, a total staked amount of 1.01 billion WAL, over 53.7 million transactions, and 1.64 million active addresses. Market performance is also responding: a market cap of 5.601 billion RMB, a 24-hour increase of 16.78%, a trading volume of 295 million, and a 7-day increase of 31.32%. Data is growing, the ecosystem is expanding, and this pace is accelerating.