With Jump joining the storage race, can Aptos stage a comeback through Shelby?
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With Jump joining the storage race, can Aptos stage a comeback through Shelby?
Jump hosts top-tier projects like DoubleZero, APT surges 30% accordingly.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Alex Liu, Foresight News
On the evening of June 24, Aptos announced the launch of Shelby, a new storage protocol developed in collaboration with crypto giant Jump Crypto. This marks Jump Crypto's first major move since its return to the crypto space on June 19. The market reacted swiftly—APT surged nearly 30%, rising from 4.2 USDT to a high of 5.13 USDT, marking one of its strongest recent performances.
Jump Crypto previously participated in Aptos Labs’ $150 million Series A round in 2022 and is renowned for its deal-making prowess and engineering capabilities—for instance, Jump is the primary contributor behind Solana’s highly anticipated validator client, Firedancer. As the first high-profile project launched since Jump’s comeback, Shelby has rekindled interest in Aptos and opened up possibilities for ecosystem revitalization and renewed growth.
Yet skepticism remains. Sui was the first to introduce a storage protocol, Walrus. Is Aptos now merely copying its competitor’s playbook? Let’s take a closer look at Shelby.
Shelby: The “Hot Storage Protocol”
From Cold to Hot: A Paradigm Shift in Web3 Storage
In the narrative of Web3 infrastructure, decentralized storage has always been a central theme. However, the field has long been dominated by "cold storage"—suitable for infrequently accessed, long-term data such as NFT metadata or backups. Filecoin and Arweave are typical examples, prioritizing durability and cost efficiency but often falling short in high-frequency, real-time applications.
Shelby aims directly at this gap with its "hot storage" solution.
According to its official definition, Shelby is the first "cloud-grade infrastructure" in Web3, featuring sub-second read speeds, native incentive mechanisms, and chain-agnostic compatibility. It’s not just about storing data—it’s about making data flow, be usable, and monetizable. Target use cases include video streaming, AI outputs, dynamic NFTs, and gaming assets—all demanding ultra-low latency and high responsiveness.
Currently, Shelby uses Aptos as its preferred settlement layer, leveraging its 600ms finality, 30,000 TPS throughput, and ultra-low gas fees to coordinate real-time data streams. Shelby is set to launch its developer testnet in Q4 2025.
Avery Ching, CEO of Aptos Labs, wrote in a personal post: "Exchanging Web3 assets can already happen in seconds, but data remains static and hard to use. Shelby addresses this critical bottleneck."
Backed by Jump, Shelby Is More Than Just Speed
If Aptos is known for high concurrency and throughput, Jump Crypto is a battle-tested veteran in high-frequency trading and real-time systems. Shelby’s claim to "hot storage" stems from its architectural foundations:
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Global node synchronization powered by dedicated fiber-optic backbone networks;
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Edge caching systems ensuring localized content delivery and sub-second read speeds;
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Clay code redundancy mechanism reducing replication costs while maintaining efficient repair;
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Native encryption + pay-per-read mechanism enabling usage-based monetization;
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Smart contract-defined access control and DRM support, offering end-to-end solutions from distribution to copyright protection.
This design goes beyond simply building a faster IPFS—the most well-known decentralized storage network. Instead, it seeks to merge Web2-level performance with Web3 decentralization, creating a programmable, monetizable, and scalable data distribution network.
Prestigious Projects Onboard, Community Buzz Builds
The ~30% surge in APT price wasn’t just due to Jump Crypto’s endorsement—it also reflects the impressive lineup of early ecosystem partners joining Shelby: Metaplex, Story Protocol, and DoubleZero. These are not only among the most active data-intensive applications in the industry but also represent key efforts across various chains to unlock the value of Web3 data.
Metaplex is rooted in Solana, while DoubleZero was founded by Austin Federa, former head of strategy at Solana. The fact that Solana ecosystem projects, many deeply tied to Jump, are now contributing to Aptos suggests that Shelby may indeed offer something compelling—and credible.
Community reactions to Shelby have been overwhelmingly positive.
Some compare it with Walrus Protocol, highlighting their fundamentally different goals: Walrus focuses on cold storage and archiving, whereas Shelby targets real-time usage and revenue distribution. While Walrus relies on low-frequency access and audit-based incentives, Shelby turns every data read into a payment event, inherently boosting incentives for data readability.
More importantly, Shelby’s encryption + pay-per-read model represents a paradigm shift in addressing the long-standing "read incentive" challenge in the Data Availability (DA) space. Unlike projects like Celestia and Walrus, which still depend on external subsidies to sustain operations, Shelby integrates user behavior directly into its economic loop, motivating nodes to actively maintain data availability.
Bigger Ambitions: More Than Just an Aptos Comeback
While Shelby marks a pivotal step for Aptos in expanding its ecosystem, its broader significance lies in being the first to embrace the idea of "data as a native asset," aiming to deeply integrate content economies, creator economies, and on-chain infrastructure. Its impact extends beyond Aptos itself, thanks to its chain-agnostic design, radiating across the multi-chain landscape.
Aptos Labs repeatedly emphasized Shelby’s composability and cross-chain capabilities in its announcement: whether you’re deploying dynamic NFTs on Solana or building RAG models on an Ethereum L2, Shelby enables seamless integration and revenue sharing via standardized APIs. Future expansion will include Cosmos and Modular Stack environments.
Combined with Aptos’ existing Global Trading Engine—a value transfer layer—Shelby completes the picture on the value creation side: the former enables free movement of assets; the latter transforms content into measurable, tradable assets. Together, they form a powerful synergy, as Aptos strives to build a closed-loop on-chain economy.
Conclusion: Potential and Challenges Ahead
From technical design and partner lineup to ecosystem traction and market sentiment, Shelby is undoubtedly a strong showing by Aptos at the infrastructure level. While Sui ignited wealth effects across its ecosystem with Walrus’ large-scale airdrop, Aptos had risked being seen as a mere bystander. Now, with Jump-backed Shelby, it may have found its pathway back into the core narrative.
Challenges remain: delivering on promised performance, developer migration friction, and cold-start dynamics in early ecosystem growth. But from both market and technical perspectives, Aptos is no longer content with being just a "faster, cheaper public chain." It is actively pursuing innovation, betting big on a new, data-driven paradigm for the on-chain economy.
When hot data truly begins to flow, the next wave of Web3 may very well begin here.
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