Features

• Storage and retrieval: Walrus supports storage operations to write and read blobs. It also allows anyone to prove that a blob has been stored and is available for retrieval at a later time.
• Cost efficiency: By utilizing advanced error correction coding, Walrus maintains storage costs at approximately five times the size of the stored blobs and encoded parts of each blob are stored on each storage node. This is significantly more cost-effective compared to traditional full replication methods and much more robust against failures compared to protocols that only store each blob on a subset of storage nodes.
• Integration with Sui blockchain: Walrus leverages Sui for coordination, attesting availability and payments. Storage space can be owned as a resource on Sui, split, merged, and transferred. Blob storage is represented using storage objects on Sui, and smart contracts can check whether a blob is available and for how long.
• Flexible access: Users can interact with Walrus through a command-line interface (CLI), software development kits (SDKs), and web2 HTTP technologies. Walrus is designed to work well with traditional caches and content distribution networks (CDNs), while ensuring all operations can also be run using local tools to maximize decentralization.

Architecture and operations

Walrus's architecture ensures that content remains accessible and retrievable even when many storage nodes are unavailable or malicious. Under the hood it uses modern error correction techniques based on fast linear fountain codes, augmented to ensure resilience against Byzantine faults, and a dynamically changing set of storage nodes. The core of Walrus remains simple, and storage node management and blob certification leverages Sui smart contracts.