In 2026, the DePIN track officially enters a period of explosive growth, and the entire Web3 ecosystem is rethinking the essence of infrastructure. The old story of mining is outdated; the real opportunity lies in transforming physical resources like storage, computing, and bandwidth into incentive-driven, verifiable distributed systems.

In this wave, Walrus, a storage protocol based on the Sui blockchain, is making significant moves. It’s not just simple file hosting; it’s more like a data foundational layer designed specifically for the AI era, directly challenging the monopoly of centralized cloud service providers like AWS and Google Cloud.

Looking at Walrus’s tech stack, the highlights are mainly in a few areas. By leveraging Sui’s parallel execution capabilities combined with erasure coding algorithms, it can distribute slices of files of any size to thousands of nodes worldwide. The key is fault tolerance—even if 60% of the nodes in the network go offline simultaneously, data recovery rates can still remain close to 100%. This durability, paired with end-to-end Seal encryption, allows users to truly control their data sovereignty for the first time, ensuring content is neither censored nor arbitrarily taken down.

Cost-wise, it’s even more straightforward. Officially published real-world testing data shows that Walrus’s storage costs are about 1/8 of traditional cloud services, and the prices are quoted in USD, unaffected by fluctuations in the encryption market. Developers only need to pay once, and their data can be permanently accessible, eliminating the hassle of renewal fees.

Since its mainnet launch in 2025, this project’s growth curve is indeed worth watching.