Reading Blobs

You can query the status of a blob through one of the following commands:

$ walrus blob-status --blob-id <BLOB_ID>
$ walrus blob-status --file <FILE>

Each command returns output that indicates whether the specified blob is stored and its availability period. If you specify a file with the --file option, the CLI re-encodes the content of the file and derives the blob ID before checking the status.

When a blob is available, the blob-status command also returns the BlobCertified Sui event ID, which consists of a transaction ID and a sequence number in the events emitted by the transaction. The existence of this event certifies the availability of the blob.

Read blobs

Read blobs from Walrus using the following command:

$ walrus read <BLOB_ID>

By default, blob data is written to the standard output. Use the --out <OUT> CLI option to specify an output file name. Use --rpc-url <URL> to specify a Sui RPC node instead of the currently configured RPC node set in the CLI configuration file or wallet configuration.

Check consistency

Walrus performs integrity and consistency checks to ensure that any data read from Walrus is what the writer intended, and that the writer encoded the blob correctly. See the data consistency documentation for further details.

Prior to v1.37, the Walrus CLI and aggregator always performed the strict consistency check. Starting with v1.37, the default is a more performant consistency check, which is sufficient for most cases. You can enable the strict consistency check through the --strict-consistency-check flag.

You can disable consistency checks completely with the --skip-consistency-check flag. Only use this if the writer of the blob is known and trusted.