Looking at the evolution of Web3, there is an interesting pattern—each major breakthrough doesn't start with optimizing user experience, but rather occurs when underlying constraints are broken. Is DeFi booming? Simply put, on-chain composability has finally been unleashed. NFT emergence? Digital ownership is being understood on a large scale for the first time. Now, with more narratives around gaming, AI, and content platforms, new problems that can't be ignored are surfacing: data.

There is an awkward reality here. Everyone talks about how "data is important," but in practice, very few people truly delve into how to store it. Why? Because the constraints are too strict. Balancing cost, performance, and decentralization under the current technological framework is essentially a pseudo-proposition. For a long time, everyone has been compromising, relying on centralized cloud services to support.

In the early days, the problems weren't obvious. Few users, small data volumes, and the risk of centralization hadn't yet exploded. But as applications begin to handle complex real-world business, the contradictions in this system become apparent. On-chain settlement of assets is fine, but data integrity cannot be guaranteed. While advocating for decentralization, the underlying support still depends on centralized services. This disconnect itself stifles the ceiling of application development.

The significance of new solutions like Walrus Protocol isn't to completely overthrow the existing system, but to acknowledge that this contradiction will persist long-term and to provide a practically implementable compromise. It doesn't insist that all data must go on-chain but redefines the role of the chain—this approach alone is worth pondering.