Recently, I saw someone touting Walrus as a "storage revolution." Honestly, this kind of packaging is somewhat exaggerated.

Looking at Walrus alone, detached from the Sui ecosystem, this project is actually hard to stand on its own. But from a different perspective—if Sui truly aims to become the "iOS of blockchain," then Walrus is definitely not an optional add-on but an essential infrastructure.

The key points are as follows:

Currently, most blockchain projects, including those claiming high performance in L1s, are essentially "naked." Application data is either stored directly on-chain (which is prohibitively expensive) or outsourced to IPFS, Arweave, or cloud service providers. As a result, the prospects of your DApp are actually held in the palm of others’ hands.

The Sui team has long seen through this issue. Their goal is not just to enable fast transactions but to support real applications with millions of daily active users—games, social media, high-interaction NFT experiences. Speed alone is far from enough; data storage costs, controllability, and user experience consistency are the real factors that determine an application's success or failure.

Therefore, Walrus's positioning is not just "another storage project," but rather a "data layer organ" incubated by Sui itself.

Compared to a casual IPFS integration, what are the differences? There are three core points:

**First is deep coupling**—Walrus truly understands Sui’s "language": object model, state logic, permission structure. The storage layer and execution layer are not connected via API but are designed as an integrated system from the ground up.

**Second is data sovereignty**—files can reside on off-chain nodes, but metadata, permission control, and availability proofs all remain on the Sui chain for verification. Sui is always the control hub, and users maintain full control.

**Finally is scenario customization**—not just a generic "store everything," but optimized design tailored for specific scenarios like NFTs and DApps. Only then can it truly support applications with demanding performance, cost, and user experience requirements.