Walrus can quickly build a global node network and break through 3PB of storage capacity. What is the secret weapon behind this? Technology is one aspect, but a more direct driving force is: economic incentives.

The earliest miners and node operators have invested real money in hard drives, servers, and bandwidth costs. They seek not just spiritual rewards like "supporting a great dream," but tangible, measurable profits. Currently, this income mainly comes from protocol inflation rewards in the form of $WALRUS tokens.

But there is a sharp issue in front of us—the protocol relying on inflation incentives will eventually face it: as token rewards gradually decrease (whether through mechanism-based halvings or the decline in token price itself), when the "good days of subsidies" are gone, can this network survive based on its true value? Can it withstand the inevitable "winter of subsidies"?

**What is the current situation**

Currently, the main income for Walrus nodes comes from $WALRUS block rewards earned after storing and verifying data. Essentially, the protocol is using its potential future value—namely, the token—to purchase the "data storage and verification" services provided by nodes today. This model is very common in the early stages of Web3 projects, and there’s no problem with it.

But for this model to operate healthily, there is an implicit prerequisite: the price of $WALRUS must remain stable or continue to rise. Only then can the node’s revenue in fiat currency cover real costs like hardware depreciation, electricity, and operations, and still make a profit.

Once the price of $WALRUS starts to fall…