Many people have a fatal misconception about decentralized storage: they think "decentralization" equals "privacy protection." In reality, in mainstream Web3 storage protocols, your files are like live broadcasts in a public square. IPFS is completely open, and Arweave's data is permanently archived and transparently verifiable. If you naively upload business contracts, private chats, or unpublished strategies directly, anyone who obtains the hash value can expose all your secrets.

That's why Walrus has taken a different approach. It doesn't just want to be a public hard drive but aims to fundamentally solve this privacy challenge through the core innovation of the Seal protocol. How does it do this? By introducing a "threshold encryption" mechanism—breaking the decryption key into pieces and dispersing them across multiple nodes, so no single node can see the full content of your data. Data fragments are only reassembled when verified by on-chain smart contracts—such as confirming payment or possession of a specific NFT pass.

This architecture is very hardcore and clearly defines its applicable scenarios. When you want to build a paid data marketplace, enterprise-grade compliant storage, or censorship-resistant private social networks, Walrus's encryption access control can demonstrate its value. But if you just want to store a public promotional poster and activate this complex, expensive system, that would be a classic case of overengineering.