Walrus Protocol sits in a part of Web3 that most people only notice when it fails: the data layer. Apps can have smart contracts, wallets, and clean UI, but if the underlying files cannot be stored and retrieved reliably, everything on top starts to feel shaky. Walrus is built to make that layer steadier, especially for large, unstructured data like images, video, audio, and other “blob” style files. �
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This guide walks through how Walrus works, how WAL is used, how builders typically integrate it, and the most meaningful recent updates across official docs, the Walrus blog, and the Walrus GitHub releases.
What Walrus Protocol Is
Walrus is a decentralized storage and data availability protocol designed for large binary files (often referred to as blobs). It is closely tied to the Sui ecosystem and is built so developers can store, read, and manage media and data in a programmable way. �
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If you want one mental model that holds up: Walrus is the data layer, and Sui acts like the control layer that tracks ownership and metadata.
The Architecture in Plain Terms
Data plane on Walrus, control plane on Sui
A defining design choice is that Walrus is not its own Layer 1 blockchain. Instead, it uses Sui for control plane functions like metadata, ownership, and coordination, while Walrus handles the heavy lifting of storing and serving the data. �
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Ownership is expressed as onchain objects
When a blob is stored, it is represented by an onchain object on Sui. Owning that Sui object corresponds to owning the blob on Walrus. The object holds key metadata such as the blob identifier, cryptographic commitments, size, and storage duration. �
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This is the part that feels quietly powerful: storage is not just “put a file somewhere.” It becomes something apps can reason about and enforce.
What Makes Walrus Different From “Just Storage”
Built for large blobs and real media
Walrus is explicitly designed for big unstructured files. That matters for consumer apps, gaming assets, NFT metadata and media, AI data, and anything that looks like “a lot of bytes.” �
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Designed around availability proofs
Walrus uses an incentives and proof model geared toward making stored data available over time, rather than assuming a single provider will always behave. The protocol explains this as incentivized proofs of availability, with Sui coordinating the canonical metadata.
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WAL Token: What It’s Used For
WAL is the payment token for storage on Walrus. One detail that matters for everyday usage is that Walrus describes the payment mechanism as aiming to keep storage costs stable in fiat terms, even if the WAL price moves around. Storage is paid upfront for a fixed duration, and the paid WAL is distributed over time to storage nodes and stakers.
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Staking and early network support
Walrus also describes an allocation intended to support early growth and adoption, including subsidies so users can use the protocol at a fraction of market price while storage operators still earn enough to cover fixed costs.
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How Developers Typically Use Walrus
You can think of Walrus integration in three practical layers:
1) Client upload and retrieval
Developers upload blobs and retrieve them later, often using SDKs or a CLI depending on the environment. The Walrus GitHub repo includes core libraries and binaries like walrus and walrus-node, plus crates for node client interactions and Sui smart contract integration.
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2) Aggregators and APIs for reading
Walrus includes aggregator functionality that helps apps read blobs efficiently. Recent release notes show new or evolving endpoints, including an alpha endpoint for concatenating blobs and APIs for reading byte ranges of a blob.
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3) Onchain ownership and app logic on Sui
Apps can tie blob access and lifecycle to Sui objects, which is where ownership, metadata integrity, and duration tracking come in.
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Privacy and Access Control: Where Seal Fits
One of the big themes in Walrus’s own 2025 wrap-up is that the protocol is not only about storing public files. They highlight Seal as a way to add access control and encryption workflows so builders can define who can access data, enforced onchain.
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In practice, this is how you get beyond “public blob storage” and into real user data use cases where privacy is not optional.
Cost and UX Improvements: Quilt and Upload Relay
Two practical problems show up quickly when you build data-heavy apps:
Small files can be inefficient to store one-by-one
Uploading from real devices (especially mobile) can be messy
Walrus’s 2025 Year in Review highlights Quilt as a native API that groups up to 660 small files into a single unit, reducing overhead, and it highlights a TypeScript SDK update with Upload Relay, which handles distribution complexity and improves upload reliability.
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These are the kinds of upgrades that developers feel immediately, even if users never hear the feature names.
Recent Updates and Milestones Worth Knowing
Here are updates pulled from official Walrus posts, GitHub releases, and reputable coverage.
Mainnet and ecosystem growth in 2025
Walrus states it launched mainnet in March 2025 and positions itself as a key component in the Sui stack.
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Institutional access via Grayscale Walrus Trust
Walrus’s own year-in-review notes that Grayscale launched the Grayscale Walrus Trust in June 2025, giving accredited investors exposure through a traditional vehicle.
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Deflation design
The same post states WAL is intended to be deflationary by design, with burns tied to transactions on Walrus.
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Hackathon projects showing real use cases
In December 2025, Walrus published winners from the Haulout Hackathon, with projects spanning privacy-preserving content moderation, data marketplaces, creator platforms, identity verification, and more. It’s a useful snapshot of what builders are actually trying to do with Walrus plus related tools.
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Software and performance improvements from GitHub releases
Recent Walrus releases highlight meaningful engineering work: reduced memory usage for storing large blobs, fewer Sui RPC requests, lower upload latency, and new aggregator APIs (including byte-range reads).
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Earlier public testnet milestone and early partners
Crypto.news reported Mysten Labs launched a public testnet for Walrus in October 2024, calling out features like file deletion, staking, and an explorer, plus early partners including Akord and Decrypt Media integrations.
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How to Evaluate Walrus If You’re New
When people first look at storage protocols, it’s tempting to reduce everything to a slogan. A better approach is to check a few grounded points:
Does it clearly separate ownership/metadata from raw storage, and is that separation verifiable? Walrus leans on Sui objects for canonical metadata.
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Are there ongoing performance and reliability improvements? GitHub releases show iterative work on memory usage, upload latency, and reading APIs.
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Is there real developer activity and a growing ecosystem? Walrus’s year-in-review and hackathon winners give a concrete view into use cases and builders.
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Is there a coherent economic model for paying storage and rewarding operators? WAL is described as the payment token, with costs designed to stay stable in fiat terms, and with staged distribution over time for node compensation.
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Closing Notes
Walrus is easiest to understand as infrastructure with a specific personality: it wants to make “data that apps depend on” feel less fragile. The recent updates that matter most are not flashy announcements. They are the steady additions that make building and operating smoother: better developer tooling (Quilt, Upload Relay), clearer privacy controls (Seal), and continuous performance upgrades in the core software.
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