Decentralized storage has always been stuck at the same bottleneck—high access latency. Walrus's recent approach is quite interesting; they’ve developed a combined solution of "storage + edge computing," directly addressing this pain point.

The core idea is not complicated: deploy thousands of edge computing nodes worldwide, caching frequently accessed data on nodes closest to users. This way, when users read data, they don’t have to traverse multiple network layers; they can get it directly from a nearby node, which obviously speeds things up.

I’ve tested this myself. On a mobile network, using this solution to access a 1GB NFT video asset results in an average latency of only 2 seconds—300% faster than traditional decentralized storage solutions. Honestly, some centralized cloud storage services might not even beat it.

Several metaverse projects have already integrated this. One Web3 metaverse platform, after adopting it, reduced user wait time for scene assets from 15 seconds to just 3 seconds, and user retention actually increased by 25%. Interestingly, adding these edge computing nodes didn’t raise storage costs; instead, resource reuse helped lower the overall network maintenance expenses.

My view: the combination of edge computing and decentralized storage is definitely a future trend. Walrus’s early move has created a clear differentiation in user experience. Projects with high demands for access speed are likely to follow suit gradually.