Mysten Labs Launches Walrus: Decentralized Storage for Blockchain Networks
1min read Mysten Labs, a developer of the gaming-focused blockchain sui, is set to launch walrus, a decentralized storage platform designed to offer programmable file storage for various blockchain networks, including Sui, Solana, Ethereum, and others. Walrus is specifically engineered to handle large binary files, or "blobs," and currently boasts a total storage capacity of 833.33 TB, with approximately 78,890 GB already in use across over 4.5 million blobs. This platform is poised to store a wide range of files, including videos, images, pdfs, and applications, leveraging Sui smart contracts to make these blobs programmable.
One of the early adopters of Walrus is Flatlander, an imaginary world concept featuring NFTs. Flatlander's website is hosted on Sui, with all site resources loaded from Walrus. The Walrus mainnet is scheduled to launch on March 27, and the team has also unveiled the tokenomics for the WAL token. The platform employs a delegated proof-of-stake mechanism, where storage nodes compete to offer competitive pricing for file storage. Mysten Labs has recently secured $140 million in funding, led by Standard Crypto, to support the development and launch of Walrus.
Walrus aims to address the decentralization aspect of blockchain technology, which is a core appeal of crypto. By providing a decentralized storage solution, Walrus ensures that the underlying infrastructure supporting a token's existence is owned and operated by many different participants worldwide. This decentralization makes it difficult to censor the chain through shutdowns, as long as there are enough participants owning a small share of the nodes. NFTs, which are not the art itself but the underlying tokens and data tied to them, can have their visual data stored on centralized platforms like AWS or decentralized solutions like IPFS. Walrus offers another option, although its level of decentralization remains to be seen.
According to the Walrus whitepaper, decentralized apps currently rely on traditional web hosting to serve their front ends and client-side code, which offers poor integrity and availability. Decentralized stores like Walrus can serve web and dApps content directly while ensuring its integrity and availability. Mysten Labs claims that Walrus is faster, more affordable, and more robust than competing solutions. The platform's potential extends to blockchain gaming, where games on Sui could utilize Walrus for various possibilities. While it remains to be seen if entire game assets will be stored onchain, the potential for more graphically complex games to run more components onchain is an exciting prospect.
