Aptos Launches Shelby Storage Platform, Jump Returns to Crypto Assets Field

Aptos recently launched a storage platform named Shelby, which is considered a competitor to AWS products. Compared to other blockchain storage projects like Filecoin and Arweave, the emergence of Shelby has attracted more attention, primarily because it marks the return of the renowned trading firm Jump Trading to the Crypto Assets space.

Jump Trading has had a brilliant track record in the Crypto Assets market. It supported the price of Solana in the early days, participated in the development of Solana 2.0 Firedancer, and proclaimed the slogan "light speed is the limit." However, the company was also involved in events such as the FTX and UST/Luna collapse.

Despite having multiple funds under Jump Trading, its core business remains market making. The company once faced difficulties due to regulatory issues but has restarted after an improvement in the policy environment. Shelby is the first major project focused on the underlying value of Crypto Assets since Jump Trading's return to the market.

However, after carefully studying Shelby's white paper, some analyses suggest that the project may not meet the standards of Jump Trading in the past. It appears more like a "shelf product" for Sui, mainly integrating existing concepts. This may reflect the competitive relationship between Aptos and Sui, both of which are projects that use the Move language.

Shelby's goals are quite ambitious, aiming not just for simple image storage but also targeting high-difficulty scenarios such as 4K streaming, TB-level AI training data, and multi-user online collaborative work. This goal seems to be somewhat beyond expectations, as it has to compete not only with other blockchain projects but also with traditional cloud service giants like AWS or Microsoft.

The main features of Shelby include:

1. Solve reading performance bottlenecks through a paid reading mechanism and the Aptos storage SDK.
2. Adopt an erasure coding mechanism and on-chain/off-chain hybrid audit to ensure storage reliability.
3. Introduce micropayment channels and on-chain reward and punishment mechanisms to achieve economic sustainability.

Compared to Filecoin and Arweave, Shelby focuses more on data reading rather than storage. It employs innovative methods to reduce backup redundancy and combines on-chain and off-chain verification mechanisms.

However, Shelby also faces some challenges. First, it needs to compete with mature cloud service providers like AWS in terms of performance and cost. Second, if users primarily use the service to obtain potential token rewards, it may lead to useless storage. In addition, Shelby's choice of Aptos as the underlying platform may also limit its application on other public chains.

Overall, the launch of Shelby reflects the ongoing innovation in the blockchain storage field, but whether it can truly challenge traditional cloud service giants remains to be seen.