Blockchain networks that host files aren’t new. Filecoin, Arweave, and a handful of others promise a Google Cloud-like product, where users can store and retrieve gigabytes of information. Now, though, a project called the Walrus protocol believes it can build a superior version of these decentralized storage networks—and some prominent investors are betting they’re right.
On Thursday, Walrus Foundation, one of the core entities behind the protocol, announced that it had raised $140 million in a sale of the blockchain’s cryptocurrency, whose ticker is $WAL. The largest investor was Standard Crypto. Other top investors who bought allocations of the yet-to-be-launched cryptocurrency include Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm, Electric Capital, and Franklin Templeton Digital Assets. The sale valued the total supply of the Walrus protocol’s cryptocurrency at $2 billion.
“Prior onchain storage attempts have struggled with scalability, flexibility, and security,” Adam Goldberg, managing director and cofounder at Standard Crypto, said in a statement.
Mysten Labs, which built the blockchain Sui, developed the Walrus protocol. The $140 million sale came together only in the past three weeks, Evan Cheng, cofounder and CEO, told Fortune. “There’s just a lot of demand,” he said.
This was Mysten Labs’s first fundraise for Walrus. Mysten Labs, founded by former employees of Meta’s scuttled crypto project Diem, raised $300 million in 2022 to develop Sui, which uses a bespoke programming language developed by Meta called Move.
Sui’s main selling point is that it’s fast. The Ethereum blockchain, essentially a decentralized cloud computing network, is slower than centralized cloud computing services from companies like Google or Amazon. Its plodding pace has prompted developers, like those behind Sui or competitor Solana, to build blockchains that promise increased processing power.
Mysten Labs took that same focus on speed to Walrus. Like other decentralized storage networks, the protocol promises users that no central entity, like Google, can delete their files. But Cheng says it’s faster and cheaper than what’s currently on the market. “Either they are basically very, very slow,” Cheng, the CEO, said, in reference to existing decentralized storage protocols like Filecoin or Arweave. “Or they are very, very expensive.”
Moreover, programmers can more easily write code to interface with Walrus, he said. “They’re only good for archival storage,” Cheng added, in reference to older decentralized file storage protocols. “They’re not programmable.”
Walrus is still in beta, but Mysten Labs has already built a web-hosting service on top of the protocol. The project, and its cryptocurrency, will go live on March 27, Cheng said.
