2026 is here, and the explosion of AI and large-scale applications is no longer a guess but a reality. However, the fundamental infrastructure that supports all this—decentralized storage—is often overlooked by most people. It is no longer an obscure concept of "data cold storage," but the true core engine that determines application performance.

At this point, we need to discuss the project represented by $WAL. This is not just another storage protocol; its core differences lie in several aspects.

First is the underlying technology. It uses erasure coding, a coding logic that allows data to be recovered within seconds even when some nodes fail—sounds complex, but the practical result is that it is both cheap and fast. Traditional storage solutions always have to make trade-offs between cost, efficiency, and reliability, but this scheme truly breaks that dilemma.

Second is the ecosystem position. On the Sui chain, high-frequency interaction projects such as NFTs, social applications, and RWA assets have an increasing demand for underlying storage. This project happens to be positioned at the data availability point, becoming a key part of the ecosystem infrastructure. From practical applications, these types of applications cannot run without high-performance, low-cost storage support.

Looking at the tokenomics, as node staking and storage demand increase, the deflationary mechanism of $WAL begins to take effect. This endogenous value capture logic is usually much more reliable than air coins.

To use an analogy—if traditional storage protocols are mechanical hard drives, this project is like a solid-state drive, with speeds an order of magnitude faster. The storage sector is rotating, and early deployment often allows you to reap the ecosystem dividends.