Many people involved in storage projects fall into a misconception, thinking that the competition is about performance and cost. However, what Walrus aims to solve is actually the fundamental flaw in blockchain architecture itself.

Let's look at the current DApp ecosystem: on-chain records are nothing more than ownership and transaction hashes. The actual content—images, audio, complete game states, AI training data—are all stored on centralized servers. This is problematic. Applications claiming to be decentralized have only achieved decentralization at the settlement layer; data is still controlled by centralized entities. Once these centralized storage services encounter issues, the assets on-chain become just a bunch of meaningless hashes.

Walrus approaches this differently. It redefines storage as the blockchain's sustainable memory layer. In other words, if public chains want to truly support applications that continuously generate data—social media, gaming, AI applications, DePIN infrastructure—they need a foundational mechanism capable of reliably hosting and verifying this data over the long term. This is the core issue.

Its advantages are reflected in two dimensions. First, the demand for persistence. Applications generate and access data daily, and this data must be verifiable, trackable for version changes, and directly accessible by smart contracts. Second, the barrier of migration costs. Once users and developers get accustomed to this system, the network's ecosystem becomes highly sticky, making migration difficult.

The role of the $WAL token is even more interesting. It is not just a transaction credential but the economic hub of the entire storage network—coordinating resource allocation, incentivizing node participation, governing protocol parameters, and transforming the fundamental capability of "memory" into a self-operating public service.

Of course, Walrus still has a long way to go. How to encourage more applications to migrate to this system, and how to balance security and efficiency are immediate challenges. But from the perspective of problem positioning, Walrus is asking the right questions.