New Trends in the Sui Ecosystem: Analysis of the Decentralization Storage Network Walrus

The decentralized storage network Arweave successfully sparked ecological enthusiasm and a rebound in coin prices by launching the computing layer AO. As a general-purpose computing chain, the decentralized storage network Walrus launched by Sui has also attracted widespread attention in the industry.

Project Background

Walrus is the latest product launched by Mysten Labs, positioned as a Decentralization storage network. Mysten Labs is the development company behind Sui, with most of its founders and employees coming from Meta('s former Facebook) dismantled blockchain project Diem.

Walrus is built on Sui, utilizing Sui to coordinate the sale of storage space and metadata. However, using Walrus does not require building applications on Sui, and Walrus will launch an independent governance token, WAL.

Technological Innovation

The core innovation of Walrus lies in the adoption of a new 2D encoding algorithm called RedStuff. This algorithm is specifically designed for Byzantine fault tolerance, based on fountain codes, and combines the advantages of fast operation and high reliability.

RedStuff encodes data into primary slices and secondary slices through a simple XOR operation, distributed across storage nodes. Its primary dimension uses a recovery threshold of f+1, while the secondary dimension uses a recovery threshold of 2f+1, achieving asynchronous storage proofs for the first time, with a total replication factor of less than 5 times.

Compared to traditional Reed-Solomon coding, RedStuff's encoding/decoding speed is faster. With low storage overhead, the system can scale to hundreds of nodes and possesses high resilience and fault tolerance.

Walrus is also equipped with an efficient committee reconfiguration protocol to address the natural attrition of storage nodes, ensuring the continuous availability of data. Additionally, its asynchronous challenge protocol verifies whether nodes are correctly storing data, with costs expanding logarithmically with the number of stored files.

Economic Model

The economic model of Walrus is based on staking, combined with reward and penalty mechanisms. Its innovative storage certification mechanism scales logarithmically with the number of stored files, reducing the cost of proving file storage.

Development Prospects

Walrus is expected to launch its testnet soon, with the mainnet launch date to be determined. As an important part of the Sui ecosystem, Walrus is expected to bring new solutions to the field of Decentralization storage.

For potential users, the official documentation currently provides information on how to use Walrus to deploy websites. As the project further develops, there is a general expectation in the industry that Walrus will bring new vitality to the Sui ecosystem.