what's shelby?
Shelby is a decentralized hot storage protocol designed to provide high-performance data access with Web3 economics. Built collaboratively by Aptos Labs and Jump Crypto, it addresses the limitations of traditional cold storage by enabling fast reads and serves, making data monetizable and suitable for real-time applications like AI, streaming, and agentic systems. The protocol emphasizes low-latency retrieval and logic gating, allowing data providers to earn revenue on every access while maintaining sub-second performance comparable to Web2 infrastructure. Shelby integrates with blockchains like Aptos to support distributed systems, including dedicated fiber backbones for real-time data handling. Its architecture challenges cloud storage costs through an incentivized network where serving data becomes a core economic activity. Key features include a devnet for testing via CLI or SDK, support for on-chain rights management, and applications in areas like live agent memory for AI on networks such as NEAR Protocol. Shelby's whitepaper outlines a system advancing toward mainnet, focusing on scalability for studios, developers, and high-throughput use cases.
Jio and Aptos explore Shelby for India's digital advertising, focusing on trust and transparency.
Links
x.com/shelbyservesFeatured in a presentation at EthereumDenver conference titled "AI's Data Crisis: Silos, Cost, and Trust" delivered by the Head of Infrastructure at Aptos Labs on February 19, 2026.
JioAds participates at IBW 2025 event where Reliance Jio SVP and Aptos Labs CEO discuss partnership exploring Shelby for India-scale digital advertising applications focused on trust, transparency, and verifiable data flows in AdTech.
Collaboration with Stan app to pioneer prediction markets integrated into social platforms.
Partnership with Jump announced; their report demonstrates 10x cost reduction for read-heavy workloads compared to traditional cloud with no contract lock-in.
New placement groups feature launches to ensure if one system fails, others keep running without single point of failure.
Over 50 projects are building on the platform.
Devnet goes live. Watcheeos, a decentralized operating system for media powered by the technology, partners with NBC Universal.
Collaboration with doublezero announced at the Aptos Experience NYC event Day 2, where the six pillars framework was presented live.
A new protocol watcheeos launches on Aptos, powered by ShelbyServes technology.
Platform positions as first real-time decentralized storage for $300B cloud and AI industry growing 30% annually.
Shelby is identified as creator economy tools within the Aptos ecosystem, demonstrating Move blockchain's versatility beyond financial applications.
Protocol expands scope to serve as decentralized information infrastructure for government transparency initiatives, following positive reception from House Agriculture Committee on non-financial use cases.
Protocol expands into supercomputing market with PhD-level expertise, targeting research data sharing across HPC centers.
Protocol positions as direct AWS competitor in cloud infrastructure space, backed by Jump and Aptos.
Protocol introduces tiered data lifecycle management with incentivized caching for ultra low-latency reads.
Global trading engine enables trading of revenue-generating content as new asset class with real-time streaming capabilities.
Protocol introduces real-time data monetization features targeting AI training, DePIN feeds, and content creator DRM use cases.
Aptos Labs and Jump launch Web3-scale decentralized storage protocol with chain-agnostic capabilities and monetization features.
Project integrates with Pipe Network as critical infrastructure provider for decentralized storage implementation.
Jump Trading announces new product built on Aptos, joining ecosystem alongside Pyth and Wormhole.