Shelby: Decentralized Storage Designed to Serve
Guy Goren, Andrew Hariri, Timothy D. R. Hartley, Ravi Kappiyoor, Alexander Spiegelman, David Zmick

TL;DR
Shelby is a high-performance decentralized storage system that combines Web2-like speed, reliability, and security features, enabling large-scale, read-intensive Web3 applications without relying on centralized infrastructure.
Contribution
It introduces a novel architecture with separation of control and data planes, efficient erasure coding, and a cryptoeconomic auditing protocol to achieve Web2-grade performance in decentralized storage.
Findings
Achieves high throughput and low latency for large data volumes
Provides cryptoeconomic guarantees through a new auditing protocol
Supports production-scale, read-intensive Web3 applications
Abstract
Existing decentralized storage protocols fall short of the service required by real-world applications. Their throughput, latency, cost-effectiveness, and availability are insufficient for demanding workloads such as video streaming, large-scale data analytics, or AI training. As a result, Web3 data-intensive applications are predominantly dependent on centralized infrastructure. Shelby is a high-performance decentralized storage protocol designed to meet demanding needs. It achieves fast, reliable access to large volumes of data while preserving decentralization guarantees. The architecture reflects lessons from Web2 systems: it separates control and data planes, uses erasure coding with low replication overhead and minimal repair bandwidth, and operates over a dedicated backbone connecting RPC and storage nodes. Reads are paid, which incentivizes good performance. Shelby also…
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Taxonomy
TopicsTransportation and Mobility Innovations · Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics Optimization
