Sui’s Mysten Labs Launches Walrus Data Storage Network On Testnet

Mysten Labs, the web3 development team behind Sui, is making progress towards revamping Sui’s data storage.

Oct. 17, Mysten Labs launched the testnet deployment of the Walrus Protocol, a decentralized storage network.

Walrus is built on top of Mysten’s Layer 1 network, Sui, enabling the storage of data including video, images, andaudio as binary large objects (blobs). Files are divided into smaller fragments and distributed across multiple nodes using a method called "Red Stuff."

Blobs were pioneered by Ethereum as part of its Dencun upgrade to bolster the scalability of Layer 2 networks.

The testnet allows users to upload and delete stored data, and hosts the Walrus explorer — allowing users to search and access stored data.

“As blockchain projects aim to become more decentralized, it has been apparent for quite some time that a decentralized storage network was needed for networks of all kinds, L1s and L2s, to support end-user applications with rich media and larger storage needs,” said George Danezis, Mysten Labs’ chief scientist and co-founder.

Walrus said that dApps operating on any L1 or L2 network can utilize Walrus Sites, a web hosting solution, as an alternative to their existing cloud hosting solutions.

The launch follows the Walrus devnet hackathon, which took place from Aug. 13 through Sept. 16. The hackathon hosted more than 40 projects and 288 developers competing for a $50,000 prize pool.

Walrus is expected to launch on mainnet in 2025.

Data inefficiencies

Mysten Labs said Walrus was developed to tackle the inefficiencies ofSui’s current data replication model.

A replication factor refers to the number of copies of a particular data file or dataset that are stored across different nodes in a distributed system or network. Sui currently requires that all validators replicate its entire dataset, leading to a high replication factor of more than 100 times.

By contrast, Walrus offers a replication factor of just four to five times, reducing storage costs. All data stored on Walrus is publicly discoverable to users.

“If you want to run your application fully decentralized, if you want to store video content, if you want to store terabytes or petabytes of data, you can now do that on a blockchain for the first time,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder, Mysten Labs

Walrus will launch a stakable native token, WAL, in the future. A testnet WAL faucet is currently live for testnet developers.

Akord, a decentralized storage provider, will be migrating from Arweave to Walrus within the next week.

SUI rally

The news comes as SUI is enjoying a meteoric surge, with the token’s price gaining 72% over the past 30 days, according to The Defiant’scrypto price feeds.

The price of SUI tagged an all-time high of $2.35 on Oct. 13 and has since retraced to $2.03.

However, it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing for Sui, with Lightcrypto, a crypto analyst, accusing Sui insiders of offloading $400 million worth of SUI into the rally.

On Oct. 14, one day later, the Sui Foundation denied the accusations, tweeting that neither employees of Mysten Labs nor the foundation’s investors were involved in any of the sales. The foundation attributed the sales to an infrastructure partner whose tokens are subject to a vesting schedule.

“No insiders, neither employees of the Foundation or Mysten Labs, nor ML investors, have sold $400 million worth of tokens during this period, either individually or combined,” Sui Foundation said.