In a major development for decentralized AI infrastructure, FLock.io â a platform focused on decentralized, privacyâpreserving AI training â has partnered with Walrus, the programmable decentralized storage and data availability protocol built on the Sui blockchain. This collaboration aims to unlock secure, communityâowned AI model development, addressing a core challenge in AI: storing and sharing training data and model parameters without centralizing sensitive information. 
Walrus: A Decentralized Data Layer for Web3 and AI
Walrus is a decentralized storage and data availability protocol designed to handle large binary files (âblobsâ), datasets, and rich media in a programmable, trustless manner. Unlike traditional storage systems, Walrus encodes data across distributed storage nodes, ensuring high availability and resilience while maintaining low replication overhead. Each stored file is represented as an onâchain object on Sui, enabling programmability, composability, and verifiable availability guarantees through smart contracts.
Walrus isnât limited to just general storage â it explicitly supports AIârelated use cases, such as storing training datasets, model weights, and proofs of correct training, making it ideally suited as a data substrate for decentralized machine learning systems.
FLock.io: Decentralized AI Training Meets Walrus
FLock.io is among the first projects to integrate deeply with Walrusâs decentralized data layer. It uses Federated Learning and blockchain to enable decentralized, privacyâpreserving AI model training, where communities â not corporations â own models and data. At the core of this approach are components like:
AI Arena â competitive, communityâdriven model training
FL (Federated Learning) Alliance â privacyâfocused collaboration among training nodes
Moonbase â decentralized model hosting environment
Uptake of Walrus by FLock.io addresses a persistent problem in federated and decentralized AI: secure, decentralized storage of model gradients and parameters. By integrating Walrus with SEAL, a decentralized secrets management system that enforces gated access and encryption, FLock.io and Walrus ensure that training contributions remain confidential and accessible only to authorized federation members.
According to FLock.io founder Jiahao Sun, prior data solutions lacked either decentralization or sufficient encryption, creating obstacles for onboarding users who care about data sovereignty. Walrusâs decentralized, encrypted storage removes these hurdles and lets FLock.io expand its FL Alliance with confidence.
Beyond Storage: Decentralized AI and Agentic Models
Both projects have ambitious longâterm goals. The next phase of the collaboration focuses on fineâtuning an openâsource foundation model, optimized for agentic interactions within the Sui ecosystem. This includes developing a prototype akin to a âCopilot for the Sui blockchainâ â capable of generating Moveânative smart contracts, assisting development workflows, and supporting contextâaware reasoning.
Walrusâs infrastructure provides the global data layer for this vision, giving developers full control over data while enabling new forms of value creation in decentralized systems. Rebecca Simmonds, Managing Executive at the Walrus Foundation, highlighted that the partnership showcases the power of Walrus to support secure and programmable foundations for cuttingâedge decentralized AI.
Growing Ecosystem Adoption
FLock.io isnât the only AI project building on Walrus. Other integrations reflect a broader trend of decentralized AI and data systems leveraging Walrus for scalable storage. For example, the Swarm Network is using Walrus to power verifiable AI agents that conduct realâtime factâchecking and store contextârich reasoning artifacts, further validating Walrusâs role as a foundational data layer in decentralized AI ecosystems.
Conclusion
The FLock.io and Walrus partnership represents a pivotal step in the evolution of decentralized AI. By combining Walrusâs decentralized storage and SEALâs encryption with FLock.ioâs federated learning infrastructure, developers can train, store, and collaborate on AI models securely and without reliance on centralized platforms. This collaboration not only strengthens the decentralized AI stack on Sui but also paves the way for new paradigms of privacyâpreserving, communityâowned AI innovation.


