THomas Řeid

@Walrus 🦭/acc #walrus $WAL
Walrus exists because blockchains, even the most advanced ones, were never designed to store the kind of data the modern internet actually runs on. Blockchains are optimized for replicated computation: validators copy the same state to agree on truth. That tradeoff makes sense for consensus, but it becomes painfully inefficient when applied to large files like media, archives, or machine-learning datasets. Replicating those blobs across every node is secure—but wasteful.
The Walrus research starts from this tension. Full replication creates massive overhead, while naïve erasure coding often breaks down in real networks where nodes come and go and recovery becomes expensive. Walrus tries to take a different route: keep large data offchain in a dedicated storage network, while using the blockchain as the place where responsibility, identity, and accountability are made public and enforceable.
At the heart of Walrus is a subtle but important shift in how storage is treated. Instead of copying the same file over and over, Walrus transforms each blob into many smaller fragments—called slivers—using erasure coding. These slivers are spread across independent storage nodes in such a way that the original data can be reconstructed even if many pieces disappear. Loss is no longer a surprise or a catastrophe; it is expected and engineered for. That difference is what separates storage that feels reassuring from storage that only works on good days.
The specific system Walrus uses, called Red Stuff, is not a marketing detail—it is the core of the design. Red Stuff is a two-dimensional erasure coding scheme that aims to deliver strong security with relatively low overhead, roughly equivalent to about 4.5x replication. More importantly, it enables self-healing repairs where recovery bandwidth scales with what was actually lost, not with the size of the entire file. This matters because in open networks, churn is normal, and it’s often the cost of repairs—not initial storage—that quietly kills decentralized systems after early excitement fades.
Red Stuff is also designed to handle a less obvious threat: delay-based cheating in asynchronous networks. In real-world distributed systems, unpredictable delays are common, and attackers can exploit them to appear honest without fully storing data. Walrus positions Red Stuff as the first protocol that supports storage challenges in such asynchronous conditions, preventing adversaries from hiding behind network lag. The goal is not to look strong when everything is smooth, but to remain reliable on the network’s worst days.
Walrus connects this storage layer to onchain accountability through a concept called the Point of Availability. When data is written, the system encodes the blob, distributes the slivers, gathers signed acknowledgments from storage nodes, and publishes a certificate onchain. This moment marks when storage obligations become public. From then on, responsibility for availability is no longer implicit or trust-based—it is visible and enforceable.
This isn’t just theoretical. Walrus makes availability provable through onchain events that specify how long a blob must remain available. A light client can verify these events and independently confirm that data should be retrievable. This matters because storage systems often fail socially before they fail technically—users stop trusting them when they can’t tell what is actually guaranteed. Walrus tries to make “the data is there” something you can verify, not something you have to believe.
Retrieval is treated with the same seriousness. Clients don’t just fetch data; they verify it. By reconstructing blobs from slivers and checking authenticated identities, Walrus protects against corrupted writes, malicious clients, or inconsistent reconstructions. The protocol is designed so the network doesn’t drift into a situation where different users quietly see different versions of the same data.
Underneath all of this, the WAL token functions as an incentive layer—not a substitute for engineering. WAL is used to pay for storage, distribute compensation over time, and align the behavior of storage providers and stakers. Availability isn’t maintained by optimism; it’s maintained by rewards and penalties that make long-term reliability the rational choice.
The real test for Walrus is not whether it sounds compelling during calm periods, but how it behaves under pressure. Repair costs, recovery times, proof reliability, and resistance to churn are the metrics that matter. Trust is earned when nodes fail, committees change, and users still get the file they need.
The risks are real. Walrus depends on sustained honest participation, usable verification tooling, and incentive alignment that holds up long after attention moves elsewhere. These are not day-one failures—they are the slow challenges that appear months later, when only the users who truly depend on the data remain.
Walrus responds to these risks with layered defenses: Red Stuff to keep recovery efficient, onchain availability points to make obligations visible, authenticated data to prevent silent corruption, and economic incentives to keep operators behaving like infrastructure rather than experiments. No single mechanism is trusted on its own.
As decentralized systems move beyond symbolic data into media, models, datasets, and archives, storage stops being ideological and becomes practical. Walrus is trying to become the place where builders can put large, meaningful data with enough confidence that applications can treat it as core logic instead of a fragile dependency.
If Walrus succeeds, storage becomes boring again—in the best way. Files remain reachable. Ownership feels real. Creators and communities don’t live in fear of silent disappearance. And decentralized software can finally stop outsourcing its most important data to systems that can revoke access overnight.
Calm is the real goal of infrastructure. Walrus is trying to earn it.

@Plasma
#Plasma $XPL
Stablecoins have quietly become one of the most important financial innovations of the last decade. Long before they entered mainstream policy discussions or institutional balance sheets, they were already solving real problems for real people. Today, hundreds of millions rely on stablecoins as a practical way to save, transact, and move value across borders without friction.

In many parts of the world, access to a stable currency is neither guaranteed nor easy. For exporters in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, weekly visits to cash shops to acquire USD₮ are part of doing business. In Buenos Aires, store owners pay salaries in stablecoins because traditional banking rails are slow, unreliable, and constrained. Commodity traders in Dubai increasingly settle cross-border trades in USD₮, while workers globally use stablecoins to remit funds home faster and at a fraction of the cost of legacy alternatives.

In each of these cases, the underlying demand is the same: access to the dollar.

Stablecoins are simply the most efficient delivery mechanism.

Yet despite their rapid adoption, stablecoins remain difficult to use in everyday life. The infrastructure exists, but the user experience does not. This gap between utility and usability is the problem Plasma One is designed to solve.
The Stablecoin Usability Gap
Stablecoins are internet-native money, but the interfaces that surround them are often fragmented, unintuitive, and inaccessible to non-technical users. Many people are forced to rely on generic crypto wallets that were never intended to function as daily financial tools. On- and off-ramps remain inconsistent across geographies. Converting between cash and stablecoins is still complex, and distribution is heavily dependent on centralized exchanges that are often unavailable, restricted, or impractical in many regions.

As a result, users are left with powerful financial instruments but no coherent way to integrate them into daily economic activity. The promise of stablecoins is global, but their usability remains limited.

Plasma One was created to close this gap.

Introducing Plasma One

Plasma One is a stablecoin-native neobank and card designed to provide seamless, permissionless access to digital dollars anywhere in the world. It brings together saving, spending, earning, and sending into a single application built specifically for stablecoins — not retrofitted from legacy banking models.
The product is designed to function as a primary financial account, particularly for users in markets where traditional financial infrastructure is slow, unreliable, or exclusionary.

Core capabilities include:

Spending while earning: Users can pay directly from their stablecoin balance while earning yields exceeding 10%.Real rewards: Plasma One cards, both physical and virtual, offer up to 4% cashback on everyday spending.Global acceptance: Cards are usable in over 150 countries across more than 150 million merchants.Instant transfers: Zero-fee, real-time USD₮ transfers between individuals and businesses within the app.Rapid onboarding: Users can sign up, complete verification, and receive a virtual spending card within minutes.

Plasma One is not designed as an alternative to traditional banking for a narrow audience. It is designed as a global financial utility for anyone who needs reliable access to dollars.

Why Plasma One Exists

Plasma One sits at the center of Plasma’s broader strategy for two fundamental reasons: distribution and infrastructure validation.

1. Distribution Where Demand Is Highest

The demand for digital dollars is most acute in regions experiencing currency instability, capital controls, or inefficient banking systems. Plasma One allows Plasma to place financial software directly into the hands of users who already rely on stablecoins but lack reliable tools to manage them.

Markets such as Istanbul, Buenos Aires, and Dubai each present distinct use cases for USD₮ — from preserving purchasing power to enabling cross-border trade. Plasma maintains ongoing dialogue with users, merchants, and businesses in these regions, and the feedback is consistent: while blockchain infrastructure is powerful, end users need products they can trust, understand, and use every day.

Plasma One is designed around these realities. It is localized, practical, and focused on real economic activity rather than abstract financial experimentation.

2. A Proving Ground for Plasma’s Infrastructure

Plasma One also serves as the primary testing environment for Plasma’s onchain payments stack. By acting as its own first customer, Plasma is able to iterate rapidly, stress-test infrastructure under real demand, and refine its systems at global scale.
As Plasma One evolves, it integrates the broader Plasma ecosystem — including DeFi primitives, exchange liquidity, and payment partnerships — into a single, cohesive user experience. This vertical integration allows for tighter optimization across the stack, resulting in better pricing, deeper liquidity, and greater reliability.
Over time, the infrastructure powering Plasma One will be made available to external teams. Wallets, institutions, and payment applications will be able to build on Plasma using systems that have already been tested in production by millions of users.
A Vision for Global MoneT
Plasma One represents a practical vision for the future of global finance.
The strategy is straightforward:
Build the most efficient payment rails in the world.Leverage stablecoins because they are faster, cheaper, and more reliable than legacy systems.Integrate on-ramps, off-ramps, FX providers, card networks, and banking partners into a single, unified interface.Set a new standard for what a stablecoin-native neobank should deliver in terms of usability, coverage, and trust.

Success is not measured by novelty. It is measured by reliability at scale.

Success looks like a user in any country downloading the app, accessing digital dollars, earning yield safely, paying at a local store with a card, sending money instantly to family, and trusting that their funds remain secure. It looks like developers choosing Plasma’s infrastructure not because of theoretical performance, but because it has already been proven under global demand.

What Comes Next

Plasma One will roll out in stages, allowing for rapid iteration, feature expansion, and responsible scaling. Each phase is designed to refine the product while expanding access to new regions and use cases.

The long-term goal is clear: to make permissionless access to the dollar a global standard rather than a privilege.

Plasma One is the interface through which this vision becomes real. It is the bridge between stablecoin infrastructure and everyday economic life. And it is the product through which Plasma intends to bring the world onchain.