There is a harsh reality in product implementation: whether you can go online is often not determined by how advanced the underlying technology is, but by two very practical issues—one is whether you can handle the most common and tedious requirements; the other is whether compliance and privacy can truly be integrated into system design instead of relying on external patches.

In the past two years, a storage protocol emphasizing "programmable storage" and "verifiable data" has indeed been distinctive. But what truly transforms it from a "technical option" into a "practical application platform" are two recent combined strategies: one focuses on reducing the cost and complexity of handling massive small files, and the other aims to unify the transparency of public chains and access control for business needs into a single trusted system.

Why are small files a "hell" in decentralized storage? Think about these scenarios: NFT images and metadata, UI component assets, chat attachments and thumbnails, AI agent communication logs, sensor data and log snippets, enterprise audit records and operation trails—all are fragments of KBs or tens of KBs.

In the Web2 world, using object storage doesn’t feel pressured because mature batch processing and indexing systems are provided. But in decentralized storage, the problem with small files is that "each file is a complete process." Encoding overhead, transaction costs, metadata management, retrieval paths—these expenses must be paid for each file. This causes storage costs and engineering complexity to be invisibly magnified several times.

Recently, the Quilt project launched by the Walrus ecosystem is a direct response to this issue. By optimizing the aggregation and processing mechanisms for small files, it reduces the repetitive costs at the individual file level. Coupled with the access control layer provided by Seal, it preserves the verifiable features on-chain while giving business logic real control over permissions. Only this kind of combination can truly enable decentralized storage to move from the infrastructure stage into a usable application platform.