Storage-wise, you can't talk about it without mentioning Filecoin, the big player. With a capacity of 1.2 million TB, it’s truly far ahead, while Walrus’s 833TB seems a bit modest. However, when it comes to cost-effectiveness, the situation flips.

The two approaches are completely different. Filecoin uses proof of replication, with the core logic being to replicate data N times across different locations. Security is solid, but the cost is prohibitively high. Walrus employs erasure coding, slicing data and requiring only 5x redundancy to ensure recoverability, making it 80 to 100 times more efficient than Filecoin. Real-world numbers illustrate the point—storing 10TB of data, Walrus needs 50TB of raw space, while Filecoin requires 200 to 300TB, a clear gap.

Arweave follows a different philosophy. Its permanent storage sounds impressive, but you need to pay for decades of storage upfront. Walrus charges based on storage duration, offering more flexibility. The roadmap also mentions launching a USD-pegged stable price system, which is very friendly for developers with tight budgets.

The real difference lies in programmability. Filecoin is essentially a storage market; once data is uploaded, it’s mostly disconnected from on-chain logic. Walrus, deeply integrated into the Sui ecosystem, can generate on-chain proof objects for each blob, allowing smart contracts to directly verify data integrity. This opens up many new possibilities—some NFT projects store metadata in Walrus, enabling contracts to verify integrity; prediction markets store market data on-chain, allowing proof of tampering during settlement. Such on-chain/off-chain interactions are beyond what Filecoin can do.

Of course, Walrus isn’t perfect either. Filecoin’s years of development have made its network more stable and fault-tolerant; Arweave’s permanent storage remains unbeatable for archival scenarios. But for applications requiring frequent read/write operations and on-chain interactions, Walrus’s design is more suitable.

From an investment perspective, Walrus has a smaller market cap than Filecoin, but that also means greater growth potential. The storage sector is far from saturated, with each project carving out its own ecosystem niche.