Fast forward to the year 2126. A digital archaeologist wants to excavate human society from the 2020s. He won't be browsing Twitter (it's long gone), nor will he check Google (access has been shut down)—instead, he opens the Walrus network, inputs a CID, and sees: "This data has never been tampered with, and someone has been paying WAL for it all along."

WAL has thus become a token of crossing centuries.

Why do other data disappear? It's simple: centralized platforms collapse, and data evaporates with them; IPFS nodes stop running, and content becomes unreachable; on-chain only the hash remains, making it impossible to verify the original data.

But Walrus's data is different; it comes with an intrinsic economic immunity system. As long as someone cares about it, there are willing to pay WAL; as long as WAL is staked, nodes have profit incentives to protect it; if a problem truly occurs, a penalty and recovery mechanism automatically kicks in. This is not just storage technology; fundamentally, it’s a protocol for the continuation of civilization.

WAL is like a "preservation tax" for digital artifacts. Museums need climate-controlled vaults, security teams, restoration funds. In the digital world, WAL takes on this role.

An open-source code repository, renewing with 0.1 WAL each year—still able to compile and run a hundred years later. A live video of climate protests, community crowdfunding and staking—ultimately becoming part of historical archives. Personal diaries encrypted and uploaded—after generations, descendants can open their ancestors' stories with the key.

The reason these data can survive into the future is not because storage devices are advanced, but because someone is continuously paying for them. This changes our understanding of "heritage." In the past, digital heritage depended on hope; now, it relies on economic incentives.