Walrus project was valued at 2 billion even before its official launch, which initially seems a bit outrageous. Only after delving into the foundation's information did I realize that behind it are all institutional-level players.

The funding round raised $140 million, led by Standard Crypto, with a16z also participating. The interesting part here is—investors only received 7% of the token allocation, which is even less than the proportion allocated for community airdrops. Such a play is rare in the crypto world. This design approach is somewhat similar to: wealthy sponsors support your project, but instead of taking the big share, they distribute most of the benefits to participants.

As the core developer, Mysten Labs directly allocates resources from the Sui ecosystem to Walrus. To some extent, Walrus is born in Rome. Looking at the vitality of storage projects, staking data is the most convincing—1.01 billion WAL tokens are locked, accounting for over 80% of the circulating supply. This level of stickiness is even recognized by industry influencers.

Looking at the lineup of investors, traditional institutions like Franklin Templeton are also willing to participate. Honestly, seeing this lineup makes me realize: where capital congregates, there must be a logic. As for what surprises might come next, no one can say for sure. Anyway, with capital playing this game, participants are likely to enjoy some benefits.