Whenever discussing the fee models of crypto protocols, many people instinctively think of a simple formula: coin price up → usage becomes expensive, coin price down → usage becomes cheap. It sounds reasonable, but from a different perspective—looking at it from an infrastructure standpoint—this is actually the most critical flaw in the design.

Why is that? Imagine you are a content creator who needs to archive works long-term; or you are a corporate finance team that needs to budget for storage costs annually; or you run an AI team planning how to store training datasets. If storage prices fluctuate daily with coin prices, you simply cannot plan your budget. Worse, users wanting to save important data are forced to gamble on the crypto market—aren't they being pushed back into Web2? At least Web2, though more expensive, has stable and predictable prices.

Walrus offers a different approach. It puts effort into the design to try to make storage costs more stable and predictable in fiat currency terms. Simply put, it separates the "usage cost" from "coin price volatility," making storage a basic service like water, electricity, or gas—rather than a gamble that could double in value every day. The key here is "as much as possible"—not claiming perfect pegging, but being honest: our product philosophy is to keep billing close to reality. Users truly care about "how much will I spend for a year of storage," not "what's the current gas fee sentiment on the chain."

For real users, this difference is huge. Whether creating content, recording transactions, or archiving data, the biggest concern isn't "spending a bit more today," but "suddenly paying ten times more tomorrow." Predictable costs are essential to support long-term applications, and this is what a storage protocol should be like.