# Jump Returns with Shelby: The "Lightspeed Ambition" in the Storage Race and the AWS Dilemma

By [Daniel](https://paragraph.com/@-daniel) · 2025-10-06

jump

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Jump Trading is making a comeback in the crypto space with the storage platform Shelby, marking the return of this market maker that once fueled Solana's early growth. Shelby aims to tackle demanding scenarios like 4K streaming and TB-scale AI data storage.

**Shelby's Technical Features and Criticisms**

Shelby's technical features include a paid-read mechanism, the use of erasure coding to reduce redundant backups, and a hybrid on-chain/off-chain audit system, attempting to balance storage costs and performance. However, its whitepaper faces skepticism for lacking innovation, with critics suggesting it's more of an "off-the-shelf product"对标 Sui.

Compared to Filecoin's miner-driven model and Arweave's permanent storage approach, Shelby's logic aligns more closely with AWS's commercial model. But this means it must compete directly with AWS on cost, facing a significant gap of several orders of magnitude in storage pricing.

**Potential Risks**

Potential risks include users potentially creating invalid storage solely for potential token airdrops. Furthermore, public chain ecosystems might reject third-party storage solutions (similar to the controversies around Celestia), potentially limiting Shelby's utility to primarily serving the Aptos ecosystem.

The article notes that Jump has been mired in regulatory issues in recent years (involving FTX/Luna). While its return is high-profile, Shelby's actual technological breakthroughs and commercial viability remain questionable. It might merely be a tactical product in the competitive landscape between Aptos and Sui.

**Summary**

**The Old Timer Can Only Go Crazy Once.**

Long-time readers might recall that the third article ever published on this account was about "Bodhi," a content-oriented tool based on the Arweave storage chain. Recently, Aptos released Shelby, a storage platform positioned as a competitor to AWS. Compared to the arrivals and token launches of Filecoin/Arweave, and even Ton Storage, BNB GreenField, and Sui's Walrus, none have generated this level of excitement. Because Shelby signifies the return of Jump Trading.

The very entity that propped up SOL's early price, the true foundational force behind Solana's conspiratorial clique气质, the inventor of Solana 2.0 Firedancer – the madcap Jump Trading that once declared lightspeed is the only limit – has returned to the crypto world.

But let's temper expectations. This could potentially be a cliché story of Jump's conspiratorial return, with Aptos making a strong move to block Sui. From CZ to Jump, these once-renowned Big Names seem unable to escape the law of mean reversion.

**Jump's Return**

Setting aside Shelby and Aptos for a moment, let's talk about Jump's glorious track record – or history of speculation. Beyond the previously mentioned SOL, the collapses of FTX and UST/Luna are also linked to it.

Although it operates multiple funds like Jump Crypto and Jump Capital, its market-making business, Jump Trading, is the core money-making machine, comparable to Simons' Medallion Fund. It's not just keen on making money but also actively researches and develops everything related to trading.

Jump was deeply embroiled in a public opinion crisis during FTX's collapse, facing frequent investigations from the SEC, CFTC, and other agencies. However, after Trump took office, adopting a "lax regulatory"甚至去监管化 policy towards DeFi and cryptocurrencies, Jump paid its fines and is starting anew.

Shelby is its first major project since returning that focuses on underlying crypto value, which differs from mere investment. Referring to Sui's Walrus token launch roadmap, if Shelby truly is Jump's new major project, it will inevitably stir up new waves in crypto.

If this guess is wrong, then it's similar to Nansen's anti-sybil business – essentially OEM processing, just another deal. Interestingly, both Aptos and Sui are projects Jump has invested in.

**Heretics are more hateful than heathens.**

After reading the Shelby whitepaper, I found it falls short of Jump's usual standard. It seems more like an "off-the-shelf product"对标 Sui's Walrus, just a patchwork of existing concepts.

As the twin siblings of the Move ecosystem, Aptos and Sui consistently adhere to a strategy: they can be surpassed by ETH or SOL, but must never be beaten by the other.

**The Off-the-Shelf Product Shelby**

Even if Jump isn't what it used to be, its moves are still remarkable. For instance, Shelby's goal isn't just reading small images; it aims to achieve demanding scenarios like 4K streaming, TB-level AI training data storage, or multi-user online collaborative office work.

Intuitively, this goal seems超出预期, even more abstract than tokenized stocks – the latter only requires centralization, but cloud service competitors include AWS or Microsoft.

After reading the whitepaper thoroughly, the following facts emerge:

1\. Read Performance Bottleneck: Paid-read mechanism + Aptos Storage SDK.

2\. Storage Reliability: Erasure coding mechanism + Hybrid on-chain/off-chain auditing.

3\. Economic Sustainability → Micro-payment channels + On-chain rewards/punishments.

**More Detailed Explanation**

\* Cold Storage to Hot Storage: Compared to Filecoin and Arweave, which focus on storing data, Shelby targets data retrieval/reading.

\* Clay Erasure Coding Reduces Redundant Backups: More backups generally mean higher security. Shelby takes an unconventional path by introducing erasure coding, reducing the primary backup to around 2x.

\* Keep Off-Chain What Doesn't Need to Be On-Chain: Off-chain auditing combined with on-chain verification; off-chain authenticity checks combined with on-chain truth-seeking; local caching combined with on-chain reads.

(Caption: Shelby compared to mainstream storage services. Source: Shelby Whitepaper)

Let's break this down further. Filecoin is essentially a miner's hard drive marketplace. Its $FIL economic model encourages miners to frantically backup data, thus turning into a comparison mechanism between hard drive prices and the $FIL price. Everyone rushes to add the final hard drives before $FIL crashes sharply. The only difference between Filecoin and Ethereum is that Ethereum actually has real utility, but no B2B enterprises or individuals use Filecoin daily.

Arweave is the extreme opposite of Filecoin. Its economic model is based on "pay once, store permanently." The core is that $AR release must be slow enough to continuously incentivize miners not to delete data. But this fundamentally limits Arweave's scale. The reason is simple: the more you store, the higher the maintenance cost, requiring an exceptionally long time to break even.

The smartest aspect of Shelby is lowering the redundant backup requirement, boldly reducing it to around 2x, highly接近 the traditional AWS's ~1.2x. Simultaneously, reading behavior requires payment, serving as the income source for the storage layer.

This is a normal commercial storage project, building an intermediary system to guide users to pay for usage. But the incentive effects of cryptocurrency will change all this.

(Caption: shelby structure. Source: @zuoyeweb3)

In Jump's design, user storage, RPC nodes, and payments could distort the original normal path. For example, users might still create useless storage to obtain potential $SHELBY tokens, provided the potential expected airdrop outweighs the small payment for access/viewing.

Unless everything is priced in USD terms, in which case it must face AWS in direct competition. Jump itself states that AWS's daily storage cost is merely $0.00000077 per MB, and the read cost is just $0.00002 per MB.

Considering AWS's costs are after years of operation, having passed the early stage of losing money to gain market share, it's hard to believe native Web3 storage projects can compete.

Ultimately, Jump hasn't designed a technically excellent product like Firedancer. Although Solana faces centralization质疑, it maintains a decentralized facade of 1000+ nodes. It's hard to imagine Shelby having the same stunning effect.

**Conclusion**

Sovereign Individual is a concept, Public Goods is too. Only commercialization allows for discussing social responsibility.

Exploiting user data for profit by Web2 platforms is politically incorrect but a commercially necessary path. If anyone remembers the early attention economy in the crypto world, they certainly haven't forgotten the combo of the Brave browser and $BAT. In fact, together they still have less market share than Firefox.

Data requires economies of scale, and storage data products are the same. Shelby's choice of Aptos also presents a problem. A major criticism of NFTs back in the day was that the NFT link was on Ethereum, but the NFT本体 was on AWS. If data for Ethereum products were on Shelby, wouldn't that be the same as Celestia?

Celestia already faced criticism from Vitalik, who转而扶持 EigenLayer. Similarly, any public chain would be unlikely to allow its products to use Shelby. If it ends up becoming specific to Aptos, then it indeed doesn't differ much from Walrus on Sui.

If so, Jump's delivery quality suddenly seems explainable.

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*Originally published on [Daniel](https://paragraph.com/@-daniel/jump-returns-with-shelby-the-lightspeed-ambition-in-the-storage-race-and-the-aws-dilemma)*
