What makes decentralized storage capable of competing with traditional solutions? The core competitiveness of the Walrus protocol actually lies in the detailed optimization of large file processing.

When data is directly sliced, erasure coding disperses the fragments across various nodes, completely eliminating the single point of failure problem that traditional storage systems fear most. The adjustable redundancy design ensures data availability is no longer compromised by any single node but is guaranteed directly through Sui's finality confirmation. This brings far more than just a sense of security—when AI training requires real-time dataset retrieval, rapid finality confirmation ensures that data pipelines won't get stuck, large media files are processed continuously, and the entire inference process becomes unprecedentedly smooth.

The delegated staking mechanism is the ingenious design of this system. It transforms trust issues into economic games. Users don't need to run complex node operations themselves; they can directly delegate tokens to professional operators, who then compete through bidding for storage allocation rights. The rules are straightforward: staking weight determines how data shards are distributed, and node performance decides how much reward they can earn. After triggering slashing penalties, malicious nodes not only lose earnings but also face severe sanctions such as token destruction. Why can this punishment truly scare off attackers? Because the security budget is directly linked to the total staked amount in the Sui ecosystem, making attack costs tied to the ecosystem's size. Malicious actions are economically unfeasible.

There's also a more easily overlooked design—token stability in the payment model. How to keep storage fee prices stable amid the volatility of crypto assets? The protocol uses a dynamic adjustment strategy, calculating token demand in real-time and anchoring storage costs firmly to fiat standards like USD. During market volatility, the system automatically increases token burn rates or reduces reward issuance to maintain this peg. The true significance of this balancing mechanism is— it disconnects the link between token price crashes and node departures. Nodes won't be forced to exit due to market panic, allowing the network to survive through bear markets. For the long-term usability of decentralized storage, this is a matter of life and death.