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The storage fund is a key innovation in Sui’s economic model, designed to make on-chain storage economically sustainable in the long term by creating a pay-for-what-you-use model.

How the Storage Fund Works

The storage fund maintains a balance that represents the cost of storing all current on-chain objects:

Two Components

Total Object Storage Rebates

Sum of storage rebates for all active objects. Flows in when objects are created, flows out when deleted.

Non-Refundable Balance

Permanent fund from non-refundable fees and other inflows. Used for long-term storage sustainability.

Storage Fund Lifecycle

Object Creation

1

User pays storage cost

Based on object size: size_bytes × storage_price_per_byte
2

Charge added to storage fund

Full amount goes into total_object_storage_rebates
3

Rebate associated with object

Object carries rebate value for future deletion

Object Deletion

1

Split rebate

Separate into refundable and non-refundable portions
2

Non-refundable fee to fund

Small percentage stays in non_refundable_balance
3

Refundable portion to user

Majority returned to transaction sender

Epoch Processing

Economic Flow

Querying Storage Fund

Why This Matters

Traditional blockchains face a tragedy of the commons:
  • Validators must store all data forever
  • Users pay once but impose perpetual costs
  • System becomes unsustainable
Sui’s solution:
  • Users essentially “rent” storage
  • Deleting data returns most of the cost
  • Long-term costs covered by non-refundable fees

Example: Object Lifecycle

Impact on Gas Costs

Storage costs are separate from computation:

Storage Fund Inflows and Outflows

Inflows

Fees paid when creating or expanding objects
Portion of storage rebates kept by the system
Excess staking rewards beyond distribution needs
Returns from fund investments (if implemented)

Outflows

Refunds when objects are deleted or shrunk
Potential use for network-wide storage costs

Monitoring Storage Costs

Best Practices

Long-Term Sustainability

The storage fund ensures Sui can scale sustainably:
  1. Bounded Growth: Storage costs prevent spam
  2. Economic Viability: Validators compensated for storage
  3. User Incentives: Delete unused data to recover funds
  4. Permanent Fund: Non-refundable fees accumulate for future needs

Gas Mechanism

Understand gas costs

Object Storage

How objects are stored

SUI Token

Learn about SUI