The most attention-grabbing development recently is the deep integration of Walrus and Seal. Seal is Sui's official privacy solution (white paper released on January 8), and after integration, it brings programmable privacy capabilities—encrypted data stored by Walrus can have usage rules added: "access limited to paid users," "auto-destruction after use," "set expiration time," etc., all automatically executed by Sui smart contracts.

This combination is especially friendly to several types of applications. AI agents need to store memories and training data, privacy DeFi requires protection of user asset information, and medical data involves privacy compliance—these sensitive information that big companies once dared not put directly on the chain can now be stored securely on-chain. Ecosystem projects like Talus AI, io.net, are already practicing this, using Walrus to store AI agent datasets and machine learning training data respectively.

From a tokenomics perspective, $WAL continues to serve as the fuel for the entire system. Users pay storage fees with WAL, node operators earn rewards through staking, and the burn mechanism is linked to storage usage, making this design relatively robust. Cross-chain expansion plans are also underway, supporting multiple public chains like Ethereum, Solana, and more, not limited to Sui.

From a practical standpoint, in the past, there was always concern that if the platform ran away, data would be lost. Now, seeing that Walrus provides increasingly strong encryption and privacy protection mechanisms, storage has truly shifted from a "technical concept" to a "usable tool." In 2026, AI and privacy will be hot topics, and Walrus's position will be quite critical. The developer SDK is also very friendly, allowing integration of file storage functions in just a few steps.