Do you truly own your digital assets?

Honestly: if your NFTs and data are stored on a big company's servers, you're actually just paying for a link. It sounds harsh, but that's the current reality. If one day these platforms shut down, your expensive digital collectibles will become illusions.

Many people don't realize this risk. They think that once it's on the chain, it's safe, but it's far from that simple. True ownership begins the moment the data genuinely belongs to you.

**Why is Distributed Storage Different?**

Recently, I spent a lot of time researching the Walrus project. Why? Because it’s doing something many want to do but haven't succeeded—truly solving the data sovereignty issue.

Its logic is straightforward: use erasure coding technology to slice your data, then disperse it across nodes worldwide. This isn't a new technology, but applying it to decentralized storage makes it especially clever. Even if there's a network issue in a certain region, your data can still be recovered in seconds. This kind of stability is unmatched by traditional cloud storage.

**Imagination Space for Developers**

For application developers, what does paying storage costs with $WAL mean? It means you can run large-scale multimedia applications on-chain without relying on traditional internet giants.

Imagine: a decentralized video platform, a distributed database, an application ecosystem that will never be shut down—these are no longer dreams. Developers truly own their rights, and users genuinely own their data.

**Pricing Model Determines Long-Term Value**

Walrus's pricing mechanism is highly competitive. If you hold $WAL, you're not just a user of this network but also a participant.

With the explosive growth of RWA (Real-World Asset on-chain) and AI data, how big will storage demand be? Massive amounts of data are generated daily, each requiring secure, efficient storage solutions. This forms the foundation for $WAL's value growth—demand is large enough, and supply is limited.

This is not just technological progress but a new way of distributing data rights. Users, developers, and node operators can all benefit from this system.

**Real Problems Still Need to Be Addressed**

Of course, I’m not claiming decentralized storage is perfect. Costs, speed, usability—these issues are still present. But the trend is clear: as the Web3 ecosystem develops, the demand for data sovereignty will only grow stronger.

Rather than waiting to respond passively, it's better to start understanding these new solutions now. After all, while most people are still storing data the traditional way, a few are already using unstoppable distributed storage.