Is anyone still paying attention to the storage sector from the last bull market? Does anyone know that storage plays a crucial foundational role in the AI field? Many people are currently focusing more on AI applications, such as AI agents and AI bots, but the storage sector is also experiencing a boom due to the growth of AI, especially in hot storage. This sector is not well perceived by ordinary users, similar to the oracle project Chainlink during the DeFi era, which was not deeply understood by regular users but once entered the top ten by market cap during DeFi's peak. Yes, I’m talking about hot storage—because the rise of generative AI, streaming platforms, and decentralized applications (Dapps) has driven the demand for this niche sector. There is a huge need for low-latency, high-throughput performance with frequent data access. 👍 Where is the importance of hot storage? There are many very important use cases. 1. Market demand shift, users prioritize low latency: For example, in the AI field, hot storage can provide millisecond-level latency and tens of thousands of requests per second throughput, accelerating access to large datasets (like images and videos) and shortening AI model training times. For instance, in inference, sub-second response (Shelby 600ms latency) supports real-time applications (like voice recognition and autonomous driving). This is very attractive for both B-end products and C-end users. 2. Potential gap in the Web3 market: Most traditional Web3 storage solutions (Filecoin, Arweave) focus on cold storage, which has slow read times and cannot meet real-time use cases. Hot storage fills this market gap, creating a differentiated competitive advantage compared to other storage projects. 3. Reducing usage costs and increasing economic benefits: Hot storage supports new revenue models, such as pay-per-interaction or token-gated access, allowing creators and developers to monetize data in ways that centralized platforms cannot achieve. Moreover, compared to traditional services like AWS S3, decentralized hot storage can reduce costs to one-third of AWS (about $0.007/GB/month). Since hot storage is so important, are there any Web3 projects currently working on this? Yes, and it’s unique. I’m talking about Shelby @ShelbyServes, which fills the current gap in the hot storage sector.

➡️Why choose Shelby? 1. Great track potential and unique: Shelby targets the under-served niche of hot storage, aligning perfectly with the explosive growth of AI, streaming, and Web3 gaming, and there are few similar competitors in the market, making it easy to establish a competitive advantage in the early stages. 2. Top-notch team: Supported by Aptos Labs (engineers who expanded Instagram for Meta) and Jump Crypto (pioneers in high-frequency trading infrastructure), both Web3's Meta and Aptos, as well as Jump, provide the most reliable technical support for the project. @AveryChing @ASHAWONN @jump_ 3. B2B commercial use case validation: Early collaborations with Metaplex, NBCUniversal, Story Protocol, and Pipe demonstrate strong industry adoption and real-world use cases. 4. Competitive advantage over Web2: Shelby aims to challenge Web2 giants in this space with the performance of AWS S3 at a significantly lower cost.

👍Introduction and Business Use Cases of Shelby Shelby is the world's first decentralized high-performance hot storage system, designed for next-generation Web3 and AI-driven applications. Unlike traditional cold storage (like Filecoin for archiving data), Shelby focuses on hot storage—data that requires instant access, high concurrency, and dynamic updates. Developed by Aptos Labs and Jump Crypto, Shelby combines the speed and reliability of Web2 with the decentralized economy of Web3, creating a programmable, monetizable, and secure dynamic data layer. Its potential ecosystem can be applied to multiple product tracks: For example, AI platforms: real-time data access to support model training and inference. For example, creator economy: monetizable content, such as pay-per-view videos, exclusive NFTs, or tokenized social interactions. For example, gaming and the metaverse: providing low-latency asset delivery for multiplayer games and virtual worlds. For example, social platforms: dynamic information streams, user-generated content, and interaction-driven revenue models. The recently popular A track speaks for itself; Shelby, as its underlying storage infrastructure, has potential similar to Chainlink in the DeFi era and Fil in the NFT era. Other tracks also hold promise for large-scale adoption in the future, with Shelby's high-speed, programmable, and monetizable features playing a crucial role in real-time data transmission.

🛫Shelby's Core Advantages 1. Unmatched Performance: Leveraging Aptos's 600 ms transaction confirmation and Jump Crypto's microsecond architecture, Shelby offers sub-second latency, supporting tens of thousands of concurrent requests per second, comparable to AWS S3 standard tier. 2. Programmable Monetization: Through Aptos's Move language smart contracts, creators can define custom rules (such as pay-per-use, time-limited access), turning each data interaction into a revenue opportunity. 3. Decentralized Reliability: A global node network ensures no downtime, no censorship, and no single points of failure, outperforming centralized clouds (e.g., the 2023 AWS outage event). 4. Cost Efficiency: Aptos's ultra-low gas fees (approximately $0.000005 per transaction) and Shelby's distributed resource model reduce costs by up to 70% compared to AWS S3 standard tier (approximately $0.023 per GB/month). 5. Creator-Centric Control: Native encryption, DRM, and access control empower creators to manage data and revenue, bypassing centralized platform fees (like YouTube's 45% revenue share). 6. Ecosystem Interoperability: Shelby will support a multi-chain architecture (currently supporting Aptos, with future support for Solana, Ethereum, and other major blockchains), offering more flexibility compared to single-chain storage solutions.

🆚Comparison of Shelby with Other Storage Products Since this is a storage project, it inevitably has to be compared with centralized storage, and it cannot bypass the decentralized cold storage giants Filecoin and Arweave. I will present a table to show everyone where Shelby excels. Comparison with Filecoin: Filecoin is good at low-cost, low-frequency cold storage, but its high-frequency read latency (from seconds to minutes) is not suitable for real-time applications. Shelby's sub-second latency and monetization features are more suitable for dynamic scenarios. Comparison with Arweave: Arweave's one-time payment model is suitable for permanent storage but does not support dynamic updates or monetization. Shelby's programmable hot storage supports real-time data and income generation. Comparison with AWS S3: AWS offers similar performance but at a higher cost, with centralized risks (downtime, censorship) and no monetization features for creators. Shelby matches S3's speed at a lower cost while increasing decentralization features and reducing single points of failure.

🤔Understanding Hot Storage 1. I went to dig up some data materials: AI and machine learning require real-time data access for training and inference, which could drive a decentralized storage demand of $50-100 billion by 2030. The creator economy, Web3 games, and the metaverse could also unlock a market scale of about $30-40 billion in the future. The hot storage sector mentioned above represents a market scale of around $100 billion, which should comfortably accommodate multiple projects worth over $1 billion, and even single projects worth $5 billion should not be a problem. 2. Currently, the entire hot storage sector is still in its early stages, with few competitors. I look forward to Shelby replicating Chainlink's success in 3-5 years, growing into a Web3 infrastructure with a market value of $1-5 billion, driving large-scale adoption in AI, the creator economy, and gaming sectors, and becoming a benchmark for the "active layer" of the data economy. 3. Everyone should pay attention to the project's official Twitter @ShelbyServes, as there should be many big moves yet to be revealed. Let's look for opportunities together (primary, secondary, product side, user side).