Walrus 2025: Year in Review

The internet runs on data. From the pictures we post on social media to the apps we open every day, we spend a large chunk of our daily lives sharing gigabytes of ourselves online. 

But for years, more and more of our data has been given freely to companies that control it, monetize it, and keep it locked in their own centralized systems.

Walrus entered the world in 2025 with a vision: store large files on a high-performance platform so users could take back control of their data. We launched Mainnet in March of 2025, officially adding Walrus as a key component of the Sui Stack for building with real trust, ownership, and privacy baked in.

What followed Mainnet was a period of growth and real-world impact. In this article, we’re looking back at the moments that defined Walrus in 2025, from diverse use cases that demonstrate what a decentralized platform enables to the new features that expanded what developers could build.

Developers Started Building The Decentralized Future

Consumers are forced to trust centralized systems that aren’t necessarily reliable or trustworthy. On Walrus, no single entity controls your data, which unlocks new use cases across AI, consumer health tech, and AI agents. 

Here are a few examples of what projects were built with Walrus in 2025.

CUDIS provides users full control over their health data, letting them choose whether to keep it private or monetize it on their own terms. 

Alkimi is giving advertisers and publishers full control over their ad data, letting them verify every impression and transaction in real time. 

DLP Labs allows EV drivers to control their car's data, letting them earn rewards via carbon credits, virtual power plant revenue, and insurance savings.

Talus offers developers the power to build autonomous AI agents that can execute real-world tasks, make decisions, and generate income.

Myriad is building transparent prediction markets where users can trade on real-time forecasts. In an industry where weekly volume can exceed $2.3 billion, Myriad has already processed over $5 million in transactions since launch, with all data stored verifiably on Walrus.

This is what happens when you give people control: they build things that weren’t possible before. And as the Walrus ecosystem grows, the number of places where users can truly own their data grows.

The Industry Takes Notice 

While developers were getting busy building new applications, the broader market was discovering and growing their involvement in WAL. In June 2025, Grayscale launched the Grayscale Walrus Trust, giving accredited investors a way to gain exposure to WAL through a traditional investment vehicle. This allowed institutional investors to access Walrus without the complexity of buying and storing tokens directly.

WAL also became available on dozens of exchanges throughout the year, making it easier than ever for people to access and stake it. And availability is only part of the story: we announced that WAL will be deflationary by design. This means that with each transaction on Walrus, WAL will be is burned. As network usage increases, the token becomes scarcer, creating built-in deflationary pressure that supports long-term value.

This combination - growing accessibility, institutional interest, and deflationary tokenomics - sets the stage for the next year of milestones.

Walrus Became Programmable, Private, and Faster

Launching Mainnet was just the beginning. This year, we rolled out key features to transform Walrus into a faster, more efficient data platform.

Seal solved a critical problem for blockchain adoption: privacy. Behind every AI model, autonomous agent, and financial application lies a dependency on data, and not all kinds of data can be public, especially in industries like healthcare and DeFi. Seal made Walrus the first decentralized data platform with built-in access control, letting developers encrypt data and define exactly who can access it, all enforced onchain.

With Quilt, we tackled the challenge of storing small files efficiently. Before Quilt, developers had to manually bundle small files to reduce storage overhead. Quilt changed that by offering a native API that groups up to 660 small files into a single unit, saving Walrus partners more than 3+ million WAL. 

We also launched a new version of the Walrus TypeScript SDK with Upload Relay to create an express lane for data uploads. Instead of client apps managing the complex task of distributing data across hundreds of storage nodes, Upload Relay handles it. This speeds up uploads while keeping them reliable, even on mobile devices with spotty connections.

Together, Quilt, Upload Relay, and Seal show Walrus’ maturity. The focus on developer experience, speed, cost efficiency, and access control reflects a platform that's built for real-world applications.

What’s Next for Walrus

2025 was about showing the world what Walrus is capable of. 2026 is about making sure it’s an indispensable part of every developer’s toolkit and an essential part of what every user wants to see in an app that processes their data.

Here’s what we’re planning:

Making Walrus feel effortless 

We want using Walrus to be as simple as using any Web2 infrastructure tool. Expect new features that make Walrus even more powerful and easy to use. 

Making privacy the default 

Privacy and access controls are critical for the growth of decentralized data, especially for DeFi, data markets and AI. We plan to focus even more on empowering private, verifiable data workflows. 

Integrating deeper with Sui

The Sui Stack is the most complete developer experience available in Web3. In 2026, we’ll be integrating with the network even more closely, so your blockchain and your data layer can communicate seamlessly. 

The infrastructure is ready. The developers are building. Now it's time to make decentralized data storage the default choice for anyone shaping the future of the internet.

See you in 2026!