Time flies, and it’s already 2026. Looking back at the projects I’ve followed over the past two or three years, some have long disappeared, while others are still touting their prospects. Today I want to talk about the Walrus project. I won’t exaggerate or belittle it; I’ll start from actual experience and discuss why I believe it is one of the rare "reliable players" in this cycle.

**The Experience Dilemma of Decentralized Storage**

Previously, when mentioning on-chain storage, most people’s first reaction is — easy to store, hard to retrieve. Waiting to pull up a stored image can make you question everything. But Walrus’s performance surprised me a bit. In the latest round of testing, its data retrieval speed was basically on par with conventional cloud storage services. This is supported by a core technology called Red Stuff. To understand it differently, it’s not about binding files in a dead end, but making data flow like liquid — **fast, stable, easy to use** — which is what users and developers truly want.

**From the Perspective of Token Value**

By 2026, everyone in the community will understand one truth: projects without real application scenarios are doomed to fail. Walrus is different; it forms deep integration with the Sui ecosystem. Currently, whether it’s the massive datasets needed for AI model training or high-quality art resources required by large blockchain games, they all rely on storage services for support.

Holding WAL is, to some extent, like gaining a "traffic monetization right" within the Web3 ecosystem — as long as storage demand continues to grow, the utility of this token will keep being unlocked.