Shebly vs IPFS: Key Differences
Decentralized storage is no longer a novelty—it’s the backbone of many Web3 apps.
Yet not all protocols are cut from the same cloth. Shebly (a new “hot-storage” network backed by Aptos Labs & Jump Crypto) and IPFS (the battle-tested peer-to-peer protocol by Protocol Labs) share the same dream of a content-addressable web, but they approach it in very different ways.
TL;DR
| Dimension | Shebly | IPFS |
|---|---|---|
| Primary goal | High-throughput, low-latency retrieval (“hot storage”) | Content-addressable file exchange |
| Data layout | Erasure-coded chunksets < 10 MiB | Immutable content-addressable blocks up to 256 KiB |
| Incentives | Mandatory paid reads + storage rewards settled on Aptos | None built-in (optional Filecoin or other layers) |
| Retrieval path | Dedicated fiber backbone → RPC gateway → Storage Provider | Peer discovery via DHT → Bitswap / GraphSync |
| Audit & slashing | Hybrid peer audits + on-chain proofs | Community pinning & best-effort availability |
| Latency | Milliseconds (cloud-like) | Seconds or more (depends on peers) |
| Replication cost | < 2× (k/n erasure coding) | User-defined—often full replicas |
| Best for | 4K video, AI checkpoints, real-time analytics | Static websites, NFTs, verifiable backups |
| Maturity | Testnet / white-paper stage (2025) | Production since 2015, wide ecosystem |
1. Architecture
Shebly
- Hub-and-spoke design. Clients talk to regional RPC nodes that fan out data to contracted Storage Providers (SPs).
- Erasure coding gives probabilistic durability with lower overhead.
- Aptos smart contracts handle payments, commitments, and slashing.
IPFS
- Pure P2P overlay. Every node can store and serve blocks; discovery happens via a DHT.
- Content addressing means the hash of the data is its address—immutable by design.
- Bring-your-own-incentives; raw IPFS has no native payment layer.
2. Performance & Latency
- Shebly provisions a private fiber backbone between SPs and RPC nodes, then charges per-byte for reads—so SPs want to be fast. Millisecond latencies rival AWS S3.
- IPFS depends on the luck of the peer graph. If many nodes pin your file near the requester, retrieval is quick; otherwise it can stall or fall back to public gateways.
3. Incentive Models
| Layer | Shebly | IPFS |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | SPs stake tokens and earn capacity rewards; slashed for downtime | “Pinning” is voluntary unless paired with Filecoin or third-party pinning services |
| Retrieval | Readers pay tiny micropayments per chunk | Free; performance is “best effort” |
| Security | On-chain audits + slash | Social trust / optional Filecoin proofs |
4. Data Availability & Durability
- Shebly’s hybrid audits constantly test chunk availability off-chain, forwarding a random sample on-chain to prove honesty. If enough SPs disappear, erasure coding lets the network reconstruct the file.
- IPFS treats availability as a social contract: you (or a pinning service) must keep the blocks online. Otherwise the CID still exists—just no node may serve it.
5. Governance & Ecosystem
- Shebly is nascent and opinionated: Aptos-native, DeFi-friendly, but still forming its dev tooling.
- IPFS boasts a decade-old ecosystem: gateways (Infura, Pinata), browsers (Brave), and protocols (libp2p, IPLD). It’s chain-agnostic and battle-tested.
6. Use-Case Fit
| Use case | Shebly | IPFS |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming 4K video | ✅ | ⚠️ (buffering) |
| AI model checkpoints (GBs) | ✅ | ⚠️ (slow) |
| NFT metadata & images | ⚠️ (overkill) | ✅ |
| Static website hosting | ⚠️ | ✅ |
| Big-data analytics spill | ✅ | 🚫 (block size limit) |
| Immutable academic data | ✅ | ✅ |
7. Which Should You Choose?
- Need S3-like performance, willing to pay per read, and comfortable with Aptos? → Shebly (once mainnet).
- Need censorship-resistant, chain-agnostic storage with a mature toolchain? → IPFS.
- Hybrid stack is common: keep canonical data on IPFS/Filecoin, push hot slices to Shebly or a CDN.
Conclusion
Both protocols push the web toward a trust-minimized future, but they optimize for opposite ends of the storage spectrum.
IPFS prioritizes openness and interoperability, while Shebly bends over backward for speed and verifiable uptime—at the cost of tighter economic coupling and newer tech.
If your dApp lives or dies by read-latency (think live video or AI inference), keep an eye on Shebly’s upcoming mainnet.
For everything else, the IPFS toolbox remains a proven bet.
Stay decentralized, and choose the right tool for the job.