Is this bull market almost over? Don’t jump to conclusions so quickly. There’s a track that is only now truly starting up, and I dare say it holds a hundredfold opportunity — decentralized storage.

Speaking of storage, many people’s first reaction is yawning: what’s the potential here? But think about it from a different angle — AI consumes so much data every day. Where are all these data stored? In the future, where will the on-chain identities and asset proofs of a billion people be kept? That seemingly insignificant "storing something" now is actually the most valuable land in the digital age.

Why focus on this track now? Simply put, the public chain ecosystem has already taken off. Take high-performance chains like Sui and Solana, for example — they’re like well-paved highways. More and more applications are running on them, and the ecosystem is becoming increasingly prosperous. But here’s the problem — where exactly is the data generated by these applications stored?

If we still rely on centralized cloud servers, it’s like handing over all your assets to someone else to watch over. They could freeze, censor, or delete your data at any time. Decentralized storage is different — it makes your data truly your asset, immune to interference by anyone.

Take Walrus as an example. In the Sui ecosystem, it does one thing: ensure data is both secure and quickly accessible. It can store NFT images, in-game character assets, AI model training data — you name it. Its core design logic is clear — "whose data, who decides," so there’s no need to worry about inexplicable takedowns or censorship. Plus, since it’s built on the Sui chain, its speed and cost are on a completely different level compared to older storage protocols.

Why do I say 2026 might be a breakout year? The key is that demand in the AI sector is starting to surface. The bottlenecks of centralized cloud services are becoming more obvious, and AI projects are already looking for censorship-resistant, verifiable data infrastructure. Once this demand is truly unleashed, the value of decentralized storage will be completely re-priced.