Web3 hotspots emerge one after another, but projects that can sustain long-term attention often share a common point—the mechanism and real-world applications form a self-reinforcing cycle. Walrus's performance over the past year is worth observing.

Let's look at the data first. By the end of 2025, the average monthly burn of WAL has reached around 120,000 tokens, a roughly 50% increase from the beginning of the year. This is not a routine buyback and burn operation, but stems from genuine ecosystem interactions. Every storage transaction, data synchronization, and application deployment automatically triggers burning, with the burn rate also linked to ecosystem activity. The data for the fourth quarter is even more interesting—peak monthly burn reached 150,000 tokens, occurring during the gradual implementation of AI storage, RWA rights confirmation, and cross-border data compliance scenarios. Based on this growth rate, doubling the burn volume in Q1 next year is not just a fantasy.

Actions from the institutional side are also noteworthy. Holdings of some leading institutions have increased month-over-month, including strategic entries from top venture capital firms. In terms of ecosystem applications, over a hundred projects are already running on Walrus. Recently, the mainnet V2 upgrade introduced a "burn mining" mechanism, where user participation in ecosystem contributions can earn additional burn rewards, further reducing circulating supply.

The brilliance of this mechanism lies in the fact that burning is no longer passive consumption but directly tied to business volume. The more active the ecosystem, the more burning occurs; the more burning, the greater the scarcity. Once this cycle gets running, the project's fundamentals are continuously supported. The airdrop window is not far off, and whether it's worth paying attention to depends on whether this logic can continue to evolve.