Welcome to Walrus, a decentralized storage and data availability protocol designed specifically for large binary files, or “blobs”. Walrus focuses on providing a robust but affordable solution for storing unstructured content on decentralized storage nodes while ensuring high availability and reliability even in the presence of Byzantine faults.
Features:
Storage and retrieval: Walrus supports storage operations to write and read blobs. It also allows anyone to prove that a blob has been stored and is available for retrieval at a later time.
Cost efficiency: By utilizing advanced erasure coding, Walrus maintains storage costs at approximately five times the size of the stored blobs, and encoded parts of each blob are stored on each storage node. This is significantly more cost-effective than traditional full-replication methods and much more robust against failures than protocols that only store each blob on a subset of storage nodes.
Integration with the Sui blockchain: Walrus leverages Sui for coordination, attesting availability, and payments. Storage space is represented as a resource on Sui, which can be owned, split, merged, and transferred. Stored blobs are also represented by objects on Sui, which means that smart contracts can check whether a blob is available and for how long, extend its lifetime or optionally delete it.
Epochs, tokenomics, and delegated proof of stake Walrus is operated by a committee of storage nodes that evolve between epochs. A native token, WAL (and its subdivision FROST, where 1 WAL is equal to 1 billion FROST), is used to delegate stake to storage nodes, and those with high stake become part of the epoch committee. The WAL token is also used for payments for storage. At the end of each epoch, rewards for selecting storage nodes, storing and serving blobs are distributed to storage nodes and whose that stake with them. All these processes are mediated by smart contracts on the Sui platform.
Flexible access: Users can interact with Walrus through a command-line interface (CLI), software development kits (SDKs), and web2 HTTP technologies. Walrus is designed to work well with traditional caches and content distribution networks (CDNs), while ensuring all operations can also be run using local tools to maximize decentralization.
