GM, This is Milk Road – the newsletter that has joined forces with Walrus to shake up your regularly scheduled Sunday format and ask you one simple question:

How much data do you think Meta/Facebook generates in a day?

(10,000 gigabytes? 100,000 gigabytes? 500,000 gigabytes??)

If you gave any of the guesses listed above, you’d be wrong.

Meta generates roughly 4,000,000 gigabytes (4 petabytes, if ya’ nasty) PER. DAY.

That’s 31,250 base model iPhones every 24hrs!

Though, to be fair… 

Once you take into consideration the vast amount of dog photos, ‘dinner/lunch/afternoons with this hunk 💖’ posts, and “Supermarket prices aren’t what they used to be” posts made by my Aunt Sharron every week – it kind of adds up.

Point is: we humans generate a seemingly unimaginable amount of data every. single. day.

And so far, our web2 ecosystems have managed to meet and scale these data requirements over time.

…but what happens when the world makes the shift to web3 ecosystems?

A whole bunch of new problems will need to be solved, because unlike web2, everything in the web3 world needs to be spread out across a decentralized network of computers.

And while decentralization is great for giving control back to the user – it also comes with new problems to solve in the realm of cost and efficiency. 

Which means as the world moves its data onchain – we’re going to need some rock solid solutions.

If you’ve been hanging around the crypto space for long enough, you’ll probably know that for a good long while the focus of web3 data storage has been on permanence.

I.e. platforms you can upload your content to that will outlast humanity.

Which is cool! I was recently trying to find an old mixtape that a friend sent to me via MegaUpload back in 2010 – and that thing is looooong gone!

But if blockchain technology is going to find its way into all aspects of our online lives, we’re going to have to shift from trying to solve the ‘worst case’ scenarios, to the ‘common case’ scenarios.

‘Cause while bullet proof file storage is great – without speed and cost efficiency, it’s a bit of a niche product.

Kinda like how Bitcoin is ‘World War 3 resistant’ but spending it in your everyday life might require you to wait hours, if not days for the transaction to confirm. 

(Cool for some, useless for most).

And if we want to game, socialize, and transact onchain, the same way we do within our current web2 ecosystems – we’re going to need a data storage solution that:

Turns out, that’s exactly what Mysten Labs has achieved with its Sui-based decentralized storage solution called ‘Walrus’.

Now, we could spend hours digging into how each of the above problems is being solved and nerd out on the specifics of what’s being done to meet each requirement – but it’s a Sunday.

And Sundays aren’t for nerding out. They’re for easy n’ interesting reads.

The good news is, the most interesting problem that’s being solved here is also the most important!

It’s all about the Red Stuff, baaaby!

‘Red Stuff’ is the name of Walrus’ two-dimensional encoding algorithm which–no, yep, I hear it–we’re getting way too deep into jargon territory.

Lemme break it down into super simple terms:

Say you put together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, then remove 100 random pieces. 

Up close, you can clearly tell they’re missing. But from 20ft away? Your brain hardly notices the missing pieces, and magically paints you a full picture. 

Kinda like how your brain pieces together a different image based on how far away you are from this photo:

‘Red Stuff’ works in a similar way to this – it fragments user data into tiny pieces (like a jigsaw puzzle), and spreads it across a decentralized network of computers. 

When it comes time to retrieve the data, Walrus doesn’t need to pull the entire file, and can instead fill in the missing parts – lowering costs and increasing efficiency in the process!

“Ok, cool, cheap/efficient onchain data, blah, blah, blah…who cares?”

We hear you. It doesn’t sound sexy at first, but let us cook for a minute, ‘cause we’re about to put some lipstick on this Walrus.

Remember the promises that were made to us back in the 2021 bull run?

We were told to expect open world, permissionless metaverse experiences. Triple A onchain gaming, where the work we put into clocking each title was reflected in tradable onchain assets. Social platforms where our data was wholly our own to do with what we saw fit.

(It was a great sales pitch).

The problem was, the tech wasn’t there yet.

And one of the biggest, hairiest problems those visions faced?

A place to reliably store the 4,000,000 gigabytes of data these kinds of mega platforms produce every day.

Walrus isn’t the be-all-and-end-all solution to 2021’s promises – but it’s a great first step.

Now, if you’re a developer, I have a favor to ask…

See, my friends and family aren’t all that interested in finance (I’m surrounded by “Index Funds and Bonds, chosen by my 401k provider ” kinds of people).

But the one thing that always sells them on the vision painted by blockchain technology is new forms of gaming and social platforms.

So if you’re a dev with the smarts to create something really freakin’ cool onchain that I can use to orange pill (crypto pill? Web3 pill?) my friends on…

Check out Walrus – it’s a decentralized storage network that stores and delivers raw data and media files—like videos, images, and PDFs—without sacrificing performance or accessibility. Meaning your data is always secure and available.

Then, build that mass-market crypto product you’ve been dreaming about and calmly send it to me. 

I’ll be your first customer/product tester/evangelist! 👇

P.S. We’re hearing mainnet is coming in Q1, and apparently there will be ways for early adopters, builders, and users to get a stake!

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.