Decentralized storage protocols need to establish a foothold in regions with strict regulations, and compliance costs are often an insurmountable hurdle—handling compliance certification alone and building a compliance team can easily cost millions of dollars. But there are ways to break through this.

The most straightforward approach is to collaborate with licensed institutions. The Walrus project exemplifies this strategy perfectly.

First, let's talk about transaction monitoring. Anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing monitoring are core to compliance, requiring the setup of specialized systems and significant investment in manpower and resources. Walrus doesn't do this in-house; instead, it integrates ready-made monitoring systems from leading compliance tech companies. These licensed companies' tools have long been market-validated, possessing powerful on-chain data analysis capabilities, capable of detecting suspicious transactions in real-time and automatically reporting to regulatory authorities. This approach reduces Walrus's monitoring costs by 70%, while efficiency actually increases.

Next, consider node operation. To operate nodes legally, one needs local IDC licenses, ISP licenses, and other certifications. The application process is complex and costly. Walrus's solution is to leverage compliant data centers operated by licensed cloud service providers worldwide. These major cloud providers already hold the necessary operational licenses globally. Walrus only needs to pay for the service, enabling rapid deployment and completely avoiding the hassle of applying for numerous permits.

This joint-win model allows small projects to achieve compliant operations at relatively manageable costs, representing an interesting approach for Web3 to realize practical implementation.