Mysten Labs, the developer of the Sui blockchain, raised $140M to build a new decentralized storage network called Walrus

“Prior onchain storage attempts have struggled with scalability, flexibility, and security,” Adam Goldberg, managing director and cofounder at Standard Crypto, said in a statement.

Mysten Labs, the company behind the blockchain Sui, has raised $140 million in a token sale for its new decentralized storage protocol, Walrus.

The funds will go towards completing and launching the protocol, which Mysten Labs says will be faster, cheaper, and more programmable than existing decentralized storage solutions.

“Prior onchain storage attempts have struggled with scalability, flexibility, and security,” Adam Goldberg, managing director and cofounder at Standard Crypto, which led the token sale, said in a statement. “We believe that Mysten Labs' approach to storage is a game changer that can unlock the true potential of Web3.”

Mysten Labs is known for its work on Sui, a new blockchain that uses a bespoke programming language developed by former employees of Meta’s scuttled crypto project Diem. Sui, which is still in beta, is designed to be faster and more efficient than Bitcoin or Ethereum blockchain, essentially a decentralized cloud computing network, is slower than centralized cloud computing services from companies like Google or Solana, to build blockchains that promise increased processing power.

The company's founders previously worked on the cryptocurrency project at Facebook, which later became Diem. After the project was disbanded in 2022, the team decided to continue developing its own blockchain technology.

Earlier this year, Mysten Labs completed a $300 million Series B funding round to build out its own, optimistically named, "Layer 1" blockchain, focusing on speed and programmability.

“We took the same philosophy that we used to build Sui and applied it to storage,” Mysten Labs cofounder and CEO Evan Cheng told Fortune.

Like other decentralized storage networks, the protocol promises users that no central entity, like Google, can delete their files. But Cheng says it’s faster and cheaper than what’s currently on the market. “Either they are basically very, very slow,” Cheng, the CEO, said, in reference to existing decentralized storage protocols like Filecoin or Arweave. “Or they are very, very expensive.”

Moreover, programmers can more easily write code to interface with Walrus. “They’re only good for archival storage,” Cheng added, in reference to older decentralized file storage protocols. “They're not programmable.”

Walrus is still in beta, but Mysten Labs has already built a web-hosting service on the protocol, which he says will go live on March 27.