The ceiling of the decentralized storage track fundamentally still depends on how many chains projects can connect to and how many developers they can cover. Filecoin and Arweave, as independent blockchains, are theoretically compatible with any mainstream public chain—Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, BSC—allowing developers to seamlessly integrate. IPFS is even more exaggerated, completely chain-agnostic; as long as you know programming, you can integrate it with any tech stack.

Walrus has taken a completely different approach. It chooses to deeply bind with Sui, directly mapping storage objects to Sui chain Objects, allowing smart contracts to operate on them directly. It sounds great—native integration, top-tier development experience, unbeatable programmability. The problem is, the cost is being completely locked into the Sui ecosystem.

How big is the Sui ecosystem? Looking at the data makes it clear. Sui’s TVL is roughly in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with tens of thousands of daily active users, and at most a few thousand active developers. Compare that to Ethereum—TVL hundreds of billions of dollars, daily active users in the millions, and tens of thousands of developers. Then look at Solana—TVL in the tens of billions, hundreds of thousands of daily active users, and over ten thousand developers.

You see, this is not even in the same league of competition. Walrus’s potential customers have been confined from the start within a relatively niche ecosystem. Even if it dominates within Sui with 100% market share, the growth ceiling is fixed there, with no room to move. A project with a $140 million funding round and a valuation in the billions, being so restricted, could become a fatal flaw.

Some might say, cross-chain bridges can solve this? That argument only considers the surface...