In the decentralized storage race where Filecoin is facing growth bottlenecks and Arweave costs are soaring, Walrus ($WAL ) is becoming a potential dark horse hidden in Binance Square with its triple ace of 'technological disruption + ecological explosion + welfare bombing'. This project, incubated by Mysten Labs and led by a16z and Pantera Capital with an investment of $140 million, not only set a record with a valuation of $2 billion but is also set to release significant positive news intensively in early 2026. Participating in interactions can lock in over 1500 yuan + potential returns, and its growth curve is showing obvious signs of an impending explosion.
First Ace: AI ecological cooperation in a chain, building a hundred billion-level data storage necessity
Walrus's recent ecological expansion speed is nothing short of crazy, having formed deep binding with three major AI head projects in just 10 days. In the collaboration with the generative AI video platform Everlyn, Walrus becomes its default data layer, undertaking storage for over 5000 high-definition user videos and a 50GB core training dataset, completely replacing the centralized solutions of AWS and Azure, saving Everlyn over a million dollars in storage costs each year. Next, in partnership with AI operating system Yotta Labs, it further opens up the decentralized AI training data storage link, addressing the core pain points of AI developers: 'high costs + privacy leaks'. The most shocking part is the AI intelligence layer co-built with Zark Lab, which automatically generates enhanced metadata and semantic tags for all uploaded data, supporting natural language searches for text, images, and videos, essentially equipping on-chain data with a dedicated 'Google engine', allowing NFT creators to enhance their work's exposure without manual tagging, and improving AI developers' efficiency in retrieving training data by over 10 times. The threefold AI collaboration forms a closed-loop of essential demand, and $WAL, as the only payment medium in the ecosystem, will see its demand explosion just a matter of time.
The second big surprise: technology crushes competitors, with costs as low as 1/500 for programmable storage.
Walrus can become the first choice for AI projects, and the core lies in its disruptive technology architecture. The self-developed RedStuff 2D erasure coding technology compresses the data replication factor from Arweave's 500 times down to 4-5 times, directly reducing storage costs to $0.02/GB/year, only 1/500 of Arweave and 1/75 of Filecoin. More critically, its programmable features enable dynamic modification and deletion of data through Sui Move contracts, perfectly adapting to global regulatory requirements such as GDPR, solving the compliance pain point of traditional storage's 'data permanently locked'. This is also the core reason why Morgan Stanley is testing its on-chain KYC storage solution. The integration with Pipe Network further enhances its capabilities, utilizing 280,000 global PoP nodes to build a distribution layer, controlling data read and write latency within 50 milliseconds, achieving high-speed access even in remote areas, completely breaking the regional bottleneck of centralized CDNs. The competitive barriers brought by the technical hard power allow Walrus to form a dimensionality reduction attack in the storage track.
The third big surprise: zero-threshold interactive benefits, with actual earnings of 1500 yuan easily obtained.
For ordinary users, Walrus's current early interaction activity can be described as 'money-giving benefits', with actual completion of the entire process taking only 10 minutes and potential earnings reaching over 1500 yuan. The specific path is clear and easy to understand: first, install the SUI wallet and switch to the testnet, obtain test currency through the Blockbolt faucet or Sui Discord, then exchange SUI for WAL on the Walrus official website, with a minimum stake of 1 coin required to participate in node mining; next, mint a dedicated NFT on the Flatland platform, upload any image to complete Blob storage, and finally complete task verification through the Galxe platform to secure ecosystem airdrops and node rewards. Currently, the number of participating users has exceeded 80,000, but it is still in the early bonus phase. As the mainnet ecosystem continues to improve, the subsequent airdrop value is expected to replicate the early hundredfold increase of SUI. Even more notable is that $WAL has landed on the Binance spot market, with the current price in the low range of about $0.12, and institutions predict it could reach as high as $0.135 in 2026, combined with expectations of ecosystem explosion, the appreciation space is significant.
From institutional heavy layouts to intensive collaborations with AI giants, from technological disruption to zero-threshold benefits, Walrus is upgrading from a storage protocol to the core of Web3 data infrastructure. With the support of the two trillion-dollar tracks of AI data storage and compliant storage, the value of $WAL has yet to be fully tapped. Participating in interactions to lock in airdrops, layout spot trading, or staking mining will all become the best ways to seize ecological dividends. Have you completed the Walrus interaction? Share your operational insights in the comments section and witness the rise of the new leader in the storage track!
