(re)Introducing Jump Crypto

It’s been a minute. Over the past few years, we kept a lower public profile but never stopped building. Today, we’re reintroducing ourselves to the world. Jump Crypto is, first and foremost, a team of builders – engineers and problem-solvers driven by a passion to help build the next frontier in crypto infrastructure which we have been steadily doing for the past 5 years. Jump Crypto’s strategy is very simple, though hard to copy: Identify constraints and build through them.

A Track Record in Hard Builds

While most still view Jump Crypto as one of the largest trading participants, which will always be core to our DNA, we view ourselves as serious builders who identify constraints through our trading and experience interacting with protocols and then build to solve those constraints. At Jump Crypto, we do not sit in an ivory tower pontificating on ten-year visions of the future; we start by identifying hard problems and building. Our history has shown us that building begets more building:

• Pyth Network: Traditional market data oracles were too slow and opaque in their data sources/quality for the needs of high-performance traders and DeFi applications. So, we worked as core contributors to Pyth, a high-performance open-source oracle with first party data for crypto, equities, FX, and commodities from major exchanges and trading firms. Pyth now has over 100 data publishers, supports 100+ blockchains, 520+ applications, with 280 million+ updates a day. The identification of a critical gap, combined with engineering and consortium-building has made Pyth one of the most successful open-source decentralized oracles.
• Wormhole: As Pyth was being built it was quickly realized that its data could not be siloed to one blockchain in an increasingly multichain world. This led to Wormhole, a decentralized open-source protocol that enables transfers of messages cross-chain, allowing for a variety of functions including the facilitation of assets across different blockchains through applications built on top of Wormhole. Over 1 billion messages have been sent and Wormhole continues to expand, onboarding some of the largest traditional finance institutions through its partnership with Securitize and Centrifuge for Wormhole powered tokenization.
• Firedancer: The idea to build a second, independent, high performance validator client for Solana traces back to Jump Crypto’s starting to trade on Solana DeFi in 2020. Jump’s experience interacting on chain showed that even a blockchain that is highly performant relative to its peers needed to be scaled if it is to approach the “North Star” of Decentralized Nasdaq.
• DoubleZero: While building Firedancer, engineers realized that it is not enough to “simply” write a new high performance validator client drawing on experience in low latency systems but that the public internet itself is “too slow” and a constraint in and of itself. The identification of this constraint, that the public internet is not designed for and cannot support the speed and reliability that 24/7 exchanges, led to the creation of DoubleZero with Austin Federa and Malbec Labs. DoubleZero, is building an open source, decentralized global fiber-optic network made up of a diverse set of contributors to be base layer infrastructure for distributed systems.
• Critical Security Infrastructure: Constraints identified at Jump have also led to the creation of internal tools and teams that are now independent companies.
• Unable to find a truly self-hosted private-key and policy management system on the market, Jump Crypto built an in-house self-custody and wallet-operations platform for managing the thousands of on-chain transfers required to support its trading business. The team behind this effort is now its own company, Cordial Systems, which offers a robust, self-hosted digital asset wallet stack deployed by Jump and multiple centralized exchanges.
• What is now Asymmetric Research spun out of an internal team of world-class security researchers and engineers dedicated to securing Jump Crypto and its builds. A lesson learned from high profile-exploits is that point-in-time security audits are insufficient and that continuous, embedded, support is needed throughout the entire development cycle. Formed to embed directly in the build process and secure smart contracts, custody management, and on-chain infrastructure, the team now delivers this expertise across the industry. Asymmetric Research’s work has helped projects avoid more than $5 billion in potential losses through its research discoveries and disclosures, and it has supported over 100 security incidents. Asymmetric Research continues to support Jump Crypto while also serving as a key core contributor to others.

Trading Challenges to Engineering Solutions

Each of these projects may seem distinct, but they share a common origin. Each was born from a constraint or challenge encountered in the real-world trading or building on chain. Rather than accept these constraints, we are driven to fix them based on our motivation and belief in the promise of crypto to power not just a new set of financial rails, but a new way of organizing.

• Fragmentation -> Interoperability: Markets and their data were isolated on different chains, so Wormhole connected them.
• Latency -> Speed: Legacy code and network latency limits high performance blockchains to scale. We responded by drawing on expertise in highly performant, low latency engineering leading to Firedancer and DoubleZero.

Open Source and Decentralized

A core tenet of our building philosophy is to kickstart builds and quickly identify and build decentralized consortiums. In each of the above examples, Jump Crypto played an important role as core contributors, providing code, but none of these networks were or are controlled by Jump. We believe so deeply in decentralization, and that a lack of unilateral control is key, that each of the above projects is not just source available, but fully open-source and even forkable. We believe that there are many valid ways of decentralizing control of a project (validators, token governance, etc) but at its core, decentralization is the absence of control, defined as whether any person or group of persons under common control has unilateral authority to make protocol changes.

Why now?

What is all this building for and why are we posting this now? Simply put, we believe that there has never been a better opportunity to build not just a new set of financial rails, but a new coordination layer for organizing. Critically, this unique moment isn’t only about technology, it’s about policy catching up. We are now in an environment where policymakers and regulators are open to engaging with the industry on the promise of crypto. In one recent example, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins in a speech on May 12 drew the analogy between on-chain assets and digital music and emphasized that regulators must craft a “rational regulatory framework” for crypto markets that keeps pace with innovation. Many other policymakers and regulators have expressed this refreshing view relative to years past and we are in full alignment that thoughtful regulation will provide the clarity needed to enable the long-term success of the industry.

Jump has been motivated for the first time in its history to directly engage in D.C., bringing its message to regulators and lawmakers with other industry participants and industry groups. Last month, we submitted our first comment letter (not just for Crypto, but the first in Jump Trading Group’s history) offering our perspectives on how U.S. securities laws can better accommodate digital assets. We urge for common-sense updates, to remove ambiguity that has been frustrating for entrepreneurs, investors, and the millions of Americans who own/use crypto. We look forward to continuing to engage in D.C. and will share our thoughts publicly, as good policy cannot be made in a vacuum and we welcome engagement/feedback from all.

Join Us in Building the Future

As we reintroduce Jump Crypto to the world, our message is one of openness and invitation. We’re still here, we’re still building, and we’re still excited for the future of this industry. If you wish to join us, directly or indirectly, as Builders, Ecosystem Contributors, or in our Policy efforts please reach out. Let’s build the future of Crypto together.