One of the most underestimated aspects of Walrus is that it assumes you'll regret your choices later.
This sounds strange, but it's the strongest feeling I have after understanding Walrus: its design assumes you'll want to look back in the future.
Most systems are designed under the assumption that you only care about the current state—past events can be compressed, merged, deleted, or overwritten. But Walrus assumes the opposite—it assumes you'll want to know: Why did it become this way? Who made the change? When was it changed? What happened in between?
This assumption may seem unnecessary today, but it perfectly aligns with how the real world actually works. In reality, the most important thing is never the outcome, but the cause and effect. To understand something, you must know how it unfolded step by step.
Walrus treats 'preserving causality' as a fundamental system responsibility, not an optional feature. This means it's not designed for short-term efficiency, but for long-term interpretability.
Such designs are often mocked early on as 'complex,' 'redundant,' or 'impractical.' But once system complexity increases, you realize that a system without history gradually turns into a black box.
Walrus, fundamentally, is about preventing systems from becoming black boxes.
