Many people see "decentralized storage" and instinctively equate it with cloud drives, then start to worry about costs—how much does it cost per GB on this platform, and how much on that one? But if you look at Walrus from this perspective, you're basically going off track. Frankly speaking, Walrus isn't playing the price war; it aims to solve a more fundamental problem: ensuring the true availability of data.

The difference lies in the nature of trust.

**Why is traditional storage called "trusting people"?**

When you use services like Alibaba Cloud or Amazon, what is the core reliance? It's simply trusting that their data centers won't have issues, your data won't be deleted, and the service will always be online. This kind of trust ultimately depends on a centralized entity. No matter how good their promises sound, they are just a contractual guarantee.

What has Walrus done? It completely reverses this logic—shifting trust from "entity promises" to "mathematical guarantees."

When you store data on the Walrus network, what you receive isn't a simple download link. You get a "data availability certificate" on the blockchain. This certificate can be understood as follows: the entire Sui network uses erasure coding algorithms and node distribution mechanisms as guarantees, ensuring that your data can be verified and retrieved anytime, anywhere. This isn't a promise from a company; it's secured by mathematical logic and network consensus.

**The collision of two trust models**

One is "I trust this organization," and the other is "I trust this mechanism." The former can be easily broken by a single point of failure; the latter's credibility comes from open, transparent algorithms and a decentralized network structure.

This is what Walrus truly aims to change.