State bloat is an inevitable issue for any blockchain network. It refers to the growing size of the distributed ledger over time, which burdens future nodes. While most blockchain projects try to solve this through technical means, the Sui Network proposes an incentive-based solution called the Storage Fund.

Although a blockchain is a distributed database, it's not ideal for storing large binary objects (blobs) like images and videos. To address this, integrating decentralized storage solutions becomes essential. That’s why Mysten Labs is introducing Walrus.

The first major strength of Walrus compared to other storage protocols is its Red Stuff encoding. This allows for much faster read/write operations and data recovery, even when parts of the data are lost—outperforming methods used by Filecoin, Arweave, Storj, and Sia.

The second strength is that Walrus storage is programmable. By leveraging the Sui Network, Walrus enables lifecycle management for storage nodes and blobs, as well as more dynamic and flexible data interactions.

Thanks to these advantages, Walrus has been able to support a wide range of use cases and ecosystems. One flagship example is Walrus Sites, which enables developers to deploy fully decentralized frontends using Sui and Walrus, instead of relying on centralized hosting services like AWS.

Walrus is not limited to the Sui ecosystem. Anyone from any ecosystem can adopt Walrus as their storage solution. In the internet vision redefined by Mysten Labs, Walrus is expected to play a key role as the backbone of decentralized storage.