Decentralized storage isn't just about uptime—it's about surviving Byzantine faults, lazy nodes, and real economic attacks. Walrus nails this on Sui with Red Stuff erasure coding + hardcore incentives. Here's the breakdown in 2026:

🔒 Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) at its core
Walrus tolerates up to 1/3 malicious or failing nodes (standard BFT threshold) while keeping data fully recoverable.
Red Stuff uses 2D erasure coding → splits blobs into slivers across shards with only ~4.5x replication overhead (vs 10-30x in naive systems).
Result? 80-99% cheaper than Filecoin/Arweave for equivalent availability, plus self-healing recovery and authenticated Merkle proofs to block malicious clients or tampering. No synchrony assumptions needed—attacks via delays or collusion get crushed.

💰 Node Incentives: Economics = Security
Delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPoS) powered by $WAL :
- Operators stake WAL to join storage committees → high collateral = skin in the game.
- Earn rewards from storage fees, subsidies, and epoch payouts based on uptime & performance.
- Fail availability challenges, withhold slivers, or act dishonestly? → slashing burns stake + exclusion from future epochs.
Continuous on-chain challenges + stake-weighted pricing resist Sybil attacks and reward reliability. Delegators stake too, sharing yields → broad alignment.

This combo turns storage into a verifiable, self-sustaining layer: Sui handles coordination/BFT consensus for epochs & reconfigs, Walrus delivers the blob magic. Over 100 nodes live, growing fast, backed by a16z-level conviction.

In a world of exploding AI data, RWAs, and agent economies, Walrus isn't hoping nodes behave—it's economically forcing them to. True decentralized resilience.