Understanding the differences between Walrus and existing storage protocols

Article source: Four Pillars, compiled by Jinse Finance xiaozou

Mysten Labs co-founder Kostas Kryptos said not long ago: "Walrus is the most modern decentralized hard drive."

‌Walrus is a decentralized storage protocol in the Sui ecosystem‌. In this article, let's explore in depth the differences between this protocol and other existing storage protocols.

Key Points:

• Mysten Labs has successfully launched Sui Network and DeepBook Protocol in the market, and is now preparing a new initiative - Walrus Protocol.

• Despite the numerous protocols in the decentralized storage market, Walrus still attracts a lot of attention for two main reasons: 1) its cost-effectiveness and security far exceed existing storage solutions; 2) through Sui Network, stored data can be programmable.

• Walrus is regarded as the most advanced project among the existing decentralized storage protocols, and its future practicality and value will be highly anticipated.

1Background - Why Walrus? Why now?

After successfully launching the Sui Network and Deepbook protocols, Mysten Labs is now moving into new areas with Walrus. The success of Sui Network and Deepbook has created great expectations for Walrus. However, despite the market's great interest in the Walrus protocol, there are still doubts about it.

These doubts stem from several points: the decentralized storage market has become saturated, many existing solutions are underperforming, and the market is concerned about resource allocation issues - specifically whether Mysten Labs is diverting resources to new projects while continuing to develop and expand Sui Network.

Therefore, we will explore the structure of the Walrus protocol in depth, analyze its differences from existing decentralized storage solutions, and study the relationship between Walrus and Sui Network, focusing on how Walrus integrates with Sui's architecture and enhances the Sui ecosystem.

1.1 Differences between Walrus and existing storage solutions

To understand the necessity of Walrus, we first need to explore its differences from existing decentralized distributed storage solutions. From my point of view, Walrus has three significant differences from existing storage models (especially Filecoin and Arweave):

1.1.1Storage Cost Efficiency

First, Walrus, Arweave and Filecoin have significant differences in storage costs. As Four Pillars explained in their article about Walrus, Arweave requires all nodes to replicate and store all data, while Filecoin allows users to decide how many nodes to store data (users can choose to have only one miner store the data, or to have 100 copies of the data distributed among 100 different miners. Naturally, the more miners requesting to store the data, the higher the cost).

In contrast, Walrus uses Reed-Stuff Encoding, which is significantly cheaper than Arweave and Filecoin, and up to 100 times more efficient (compared to Arweave, which requires the entire network to store data, resulting in a replication cost of up to 500 times, while Walrus only needs 4-5 times replication to maintain efficiency). At the same time, the probability of data loss is also significantly reduced.

In short, Walrus solves the shortcomings of Arweave and Filecoin. Arweave has a low probability of data loss but a high replication cost, while Filecoin provides relatively economical storage based on user needs, but the low-cost option may lead to a higher risk of data loss. Walrus combines the advantages of both, maintaining low replication costs while minimizing the probability of data loss.

In addition, as the number of nodes increases, the cost of Arweave increases linearly because all nodes/designated nodes must store a complete copy of the data. Walrus only requires one network data transfer, and each node stores part of the data. As the network expands, the burden on a single node is reduced. This structural difference makes Walrus's storage cost efficiency significantly higher than Arweave and Filecoin.

1.1.2 Programmability

Although Walrus is superior to Arweave and Filecoin in efficiency, its most significant difference from existing storage models is "programmability". Traditional storage only serves as a simple data warehouse, while Walrus realizes programmable decentralized storage through Sui Network, making its functions go beyond basic data storage.

What if smart contracts can directly reference or trigger data stored in decentralized storage? For example, when minting NFTs, image files can be stored in Walrus and their blob data objects can be created on Sui Network, connecting them to the NFT object. This solves the criticism of the "incompleteness" of traditional NFTs (i.e., tokens are on the chain, while NFT art metadata is stored off the chain), making NFTs through Walrus true Web3 assets.

To take another example directly related to data storage, since Walrus’ blobs can be stored as Sui objects and controlled through Sui’s Move smart contracts, the smart contracts can transfer the stored data to other users or automatically change ownership. This is why we say that data in Walrus is programmable.

In contrast, Arweave and Filecoin have limited or almost impossible dynamic integration with on-chain applications. Although Filecoin has added some smart contract features through FVM (Filecoin Virtual Machine), data modification and control capabilities are still limited, which makes Walrus significantly better than both in terms of programmability.

1.1.3 Data Access and Deletion

A feature of existing storage protocols is that once data is uploaded, it can be accessed by anyone and cannot be deleted. While this feature may be useful for individual users, it has significant limitations for institutions and businesses that need to store sensitive data or need to modify/delete data. In contrast, Walrus allows users to dispose of or modify their data when needed (this is completely different from Arweave, where data cannot be deleted or modified; and Filecoin, where data is deleted not because of the user's will, but because the contract expires or the node storing the user's data goes offline and no longer exists in the network).

Some people may worry that this conflicts with the immutability principle of the blockchain, but remember that only blob data is deleted in Walrus. Independent of the deletion of blob data, transaction data remains immutable, and deleting blob data does not affect the integrity of the blockchain.

Compared to traditional storage, Walrus's enhanced practicality increases its adoption potential in traditional enterprises and Web2 enterprises, and its versatility in the future is highly anticipated.

1.2 Synergy between Walrus and Sui Network

After exploring the differences between Walrus and existing storage protocols, we now look at the relationship between Walrus and Sui Network. When Mysten Labs announced the Walrus protocol, many people were critical, questioning "Should they focus on Sui instead of creating another protocol?" However, as long as you have a basic understanding of how Walrus works, you will understand that Walrus is not a distraction from Sui, but should be seen as a storage stack built to complement the applications on Sui. In other words, not only does Walrus complement Sui Network from a storage perspective, it also has a positive impact on Sui Network’s governance token, SUI, making the two inseparable. Let’s explore this in more detail. 1.2.1 Symbiotic Relationship between Sui and Walrus In fact, Mysten Labs had major concerns about the maintenance and management of storage during Sui’s initial design phase. This is because the state of the blockchain inevitably grows with increasing usage, which could eventually lead to increased transaction fees for future Sui Network users. Therefore, from Sui’s early design phase, Mysten Labs introduced a unique concept of a storage fund to address Sui’s storage challenges.

Sui Storage Fund operates as follows: Fees submitted by users to Sui validators are divided into 1) gas fees associated with computation and 2) storage costs for data storage. Sui charges users storage costs for permanent data storage upfront and pools these funds into the Storage Fund. The Storage Fund continuously redistributes accumulated amounts to validators while the data is still stored on-chain. Additionally, if users delete data, they can receive a refund for storage costs.

Sui’s unique on-chain data storage system produces two results:

1) Users receive rebates on storage costs when they delete on-chain data, which creates an economic incentive to reduce the capacity of the distributed ledger.

2) The system solves the sustainability issues associated with storage by collecting storage fees upfront and using them as an incentive for future validators.

While Sui solves the sustainability issue through this unique structure, storing large blobs of data (such as media files) on-chain is still burdensome. This is where Walrus comes in - by storing large blobs of data with Walrus while objectifying the metadata of the blobs on Sui for control, data can be programmable without being stored directly on Sui.

In addition, through Sui, Walrus achieves the most significant feature compared to other storage protocols, that is, the stored data is programmable and controllable. Ultimately, Sui and Walrus form a symbiotic relationship, which creates unique advantages and complements each other's limitations.

1.2.2 Walrus makes SUI tokens a deflationary asset

As shown in the storage fund example, Sui Network requires a certain amount of Sui tokens to be paid as the storage cost of storing any object. Walrus is no exception. When a blob data object is created in Walrus, a number of Sui tokens proportional to the size of the object are locked in the storage fund.

While some of the fees are refundable when data is deleted, some of the fees create a burn effect by permanently removing tokens from circulation. In other words, the more data is stored through Walrus, the more Sui tokens are permanently locked in the storage fund, creating a virtuous cycle where increased Walrus usage leads to a decrease in Sui supply.

In summary, the emergence of Walrus is good news for Sui Network, both from a network and asset perspective, and it is expected that the Sui ecosystem will develop in a more diversified direction through Walrus.

2Conclusion - Walrus will become Sui's most critical protocol

2.1 Mysten Labsis not just building a blockchain

When Mysten Labs was first established, I thought it was just a company focused on Sui Network. However, after witnessing the launch of services such as Deepbook and Sui Naming Service, I began to think about what Mysten Labs's vision is. When I came into contact with Walrus, I came to the conclusion that their goal is to build a complete Web3 decentralized infrastructure.

Mysten Labs has a different time horizon than other companies when looking at this industry. They didn’t just issue a token, create hype, and sell off; instead, they had a vision to lead innovation in all areas of execution, storage, consensus, and communication, while understanding the inertia of users accustomed to Web2 services and building the most appropriate user interface for them.

Execution and consensus are handled by Sui Network (with ongoing development through initiatives like Mysticeti and Pilotfish & Remora), storage is handled by Walrus, communication is handled by SCION (a next-generation internet architecture that protects network packets from DDoS and routing attacks - note that SCION was not created by Mysten Labs, but is mentioned because it will be used in Sui Network), and the Web2-familiar user interface is managed by zkLogin, Stashed, SEAL, and KELP.

If all of these initiatives can successfully take root, I believe Mysten Labs can rewrite the existing Web3 paradigm. My initial thoughts were limited. Mysten Labs is not just trying to build a blockchain - they are a team building infrastructure for a new web. Of course, I believe Sui is the core of Mysten Labs's vision, and the other initiatives all play a complementary role. The same is true for Walrus, which in my opinion is probably the most important protocol among them.

2.2Walrus is not limited to the Sui ecosystem

However, Walrus is not limited to the Sui ecosystem. Like other storage protocols, Walrus can be used by any third party outside of the Sui application, and it may even become a useful alternative to existing storage protocols or other DA layers such as Celestia, EigenDA, Avail. This usability of Walrus extends the demand for Sui tokens beyond the Sui Network. When Walrus is used, objects are created on the Sui Network, resulting in a reduction in the Sui supply. In other words, Walrus has the potential to make Sui tokens a more attractive asset by creating external demand (this is not an investment recommendation, but a structurally possible scenario). Therefore, Walrus is expected to become a bridge for Sui to expand in multiple directions.

2.3 Can Walrus surpass Filecoin?

While comparing the value between specific protocols is a delicate question, I am very optimistic about the future of Walrus because: 1) its operating mechanism is far more efficient than existing storage protocols; 2) it can perform tasks that existing storage protocols cannot (becoming a DA or making stored data programmable); 3) it already has a solid network and user base through Sui Network.

If Walrus becomes not only the storage layer of Sui Network, but also the representative storage protocol of Web3 as envisioned by Mysten Labs, it has the potential to become the leading protocol in the storage field.