After a series of upheavals from the Terra and FTX collapses to the August 2024 sell-off, market maker Jump Trading is making a resurgence in Web3 with a massive recruitment drive and a suite of strategic infrastructure projects like Firedancer, Shelby, Pyth, and Wormhole.

A Brief Overview of Jump Trading, Jump Capital, and Jump Crypto

Jump Trading is a trading firm founded in 1999 in Chicago (US) by two former CME floor traders, Bill DiSomma and Paul Gurinas. It quickly became a world-leading high-frequency trading (HFT) firm, active in futures, options, equities, US government bonds, and also crypto. Jump Trading is notoriously secretive, rarely publishing financial data and maintaining a behind-the-scenes image.

Around 2020, Jump Financial was established as the parent company for all "Jump" entities (including Jump Trading), managing over $7.6 billion in assets with approximately 1,600 employees. The Jump Financial ecosystem is complex, with occasional overlapping operations among its subsidiaries.

• Jump Capital (founded in 2012) is a subsidiary of Jump Financial. It is a traditional venture capital firm but made early investments in crypto, with a portfolio of over 80 projects such as IoTeX, Sei, Galxe, Mantle, and Phantom.
• Jump Crypto, launched in 2021 and a part of Jump Trading, is entirely focused on the crypto market. Jump Crypto simultaneously serves three roles: a market maker, a venture capital fund, and a protocol developer.

Why Jump Trading Withdrew from Crypto

The UST Bet and Its Consequences

In 2021, Jump Trading placed a significant bet on the Terra ecosystem. In May of that year, when Terra's algorithmic stablecoin UST first lost its peg, Jump secretly bought a large amount of UST to pull its price back to the $1 mark. Jump was also granted the right to buy 61.4 million LUNA tokens from Terraform Labs at a preferential price of $0.4 per token. This deal brought Jump an estimated $1.28 billion in profit, and Kanav Kariya, who proposed the plan, was promoted to president of Jump Crypto when the entity was formed four months later. However, this very bet on UST planted the seeds for a future tragedy.

By May 2022, the Terra ecosystem collapsed completely, and UST entered a death spiral. Jump was accused of coordinating with Terra to manipulate UST's price and faced a criminal investigation. Although Jump did not admit wrongdoing and later reached a settlement with the SEC (by paying a $123 million fine in late 2024 through its subsidiary Tai Mo Shan), Jump's reputation was severely damaged. Former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler once called the Terra incident proof of the "enormous losses investors suffer from fraudulent conduct in crypto."

Losses from the FTX Event and Regulatory Pressure

In parallel with the shock from Terra, Jump also incurred compounding losses from the collapse of the FTX exchange in late 2022. Due to its deep ties with Sam Bankman-Fried's empire, particularly in the Solana ecosystem (where Jump was a major market maker for projects backed by FTX and Alameda), Jump suffered heavy losses when FTX filed for bankruptcy. This event led US authorities to tighten their oversight of the crypto industry, forcing Jump Trading to downsize its operations and gradually withdraw from the crypto market in the US.

For example, the Robinhood trading app terminated its partnership with Jump immediately after the FTX collapse, even though Jump's subsidiary Tai Mo Shan was a major market maker for Robinhood, processing billions of dollars in trading volume daily. By Q4 2022, the name Tai Mo Shan disappeared from Robinhood's financial reports, as the exchange shifted to working with other market makers like B2C2.

The August 2024 Sell-off and Rumors of Collapse

After the consecutive upheavals of 2022, Jump Trading was largely silent in 2023, even spinning off its Wormhole project into a separate company (November 2023) and cutting nearly half of its Jump Crypto staff.

In early August 2024, Jump Trading once again became a focal point when it executed a large-scale sell-off. In just 10 days, Jump secretly sold over $300 million worth of ETH (including unstaked ETH from Lido), causing market panic. On August 5, 2024, the ETH price plummeted 25%, and rumors spread that Jump Trading was on the verge of bankruptcy.

• Jump Trading continuously sold ETH over 10 days. Source: Cointelegraph
• Image Suggestion: A chart from Cointelegraph showing the steep decline of ETH price and a corresponding rise in exchange deposits, with text mentioning Jump Trading's selling.

There are many unknowns behind Jump Trading's actions, but three hypotheses have been proposed. First, Jump Trading had to sell assets to accumulate stablecoins in preparation to pay a fine in the Terra case. Second, Jump Trading was under pressure from a CFTC investigation (rumored since June 2024) and had to convert assets to stablecoins to quickly exit the market if necessary. The third hypothesis is that Jump was hit with a margin call while executing a Yen carry trade strategy. "In my opinion, Jump Trading borrowed Japanese Yen to increase liquidity or buy more crypto," said Mads Eberhardt, a crypto analyst at Steno Research. "When the Yen appreciated sharply against the USD, and the collateral assets lost value, Jump Trading could have been hit with a margin call on these loans."

Jump Returns with Ambitious Infrastructure Projects

In early 2025, signs of Jump Trading's return became increasingly clear. According to internal sources at CoinDesk, Jump is in the process of restoring its entire crypto business. On the Jump Trading homepage, many crypto engineer positions have been posted for offices in Chicago, Sydney, Singapore, and London. This shows the company is actively recruiting talent to relaunch its digital asset trading and investment activities. Not only that, CoinDesk also reported that Jump plans to add staff specializing in regulatory policy and relations with the US government.

In parallel with personnel issues, Jump's investment and product development strategy has taken new steps, gradually putting the company back in the funding race in 2024. For example, in March 2024, Jump Crypto led a Series A funding round of $60 million for Figure Markets (DeFi startup).

By late 2024, Jump Trading had settled its legal issues with the SEC and related parties, removing the "hanging verdict" that had been hindering this giant. The legal environment also shifted for the better as the new administration in the US adopted a crypto-friendly stance, and many major lawsuits (involving Binance, Coinbase, ConsenSys...) were dismissed. With no more obstacles, Jump returned with confidence.

The highlight of Jump's comeback is a series of ambitious technology projects that they had been quietly nurturing during their time "in hiding." Jump Crypto even stated: "We've maintained a humble position but never stopped building products." Now, those products are gradually being unveiled, showing that Jump is not just a trading firm but a credible builder.

Firedancer

Firedancer is a new client (validator software) for the Solana blockchain, developed by Jump Crypto, running in parallel with the original Solana client. Written in C and C++, and led by Kevin Bowers, Jump's Director of Science, Firedancer aims to significantly enhance the throughput and stability of the Solana network, which has faced numerous downtime incidents. In November 2022, the project made waves by successfully testing its ability to process 1.2 million TPS (transactions per second) on a simulated network, a speed nearing that of traditional stock markets. When complete, Firedancer will add an independent client, helping to decentralize Solana and reduce its reliance on Solana Labs.

Pyth Network

Pyth Network is a decentralized oracle network initiated by Jump in 2021, providing low-latency market data for blockchains. Initially deployed on Solana, Pyth has now integrated with 78 blockchains and has 114 data provider partners, including major names like Jane Street, Cboe, and Binance.

• Pyth Network accounts for 6.3% of the oracle market share by TVS. Source: DefiLlama
• Image Suggestion: A pie chart from DefiLlama showing Pyth Network's market share relative to other oracle providers.

The "pull oracle" model allows DeFi protocols to call data directly on-chain when needed, saving costs and enabling scalability. In August 2025, Pyth reached a TVS (Total Value Secured) of $6.2 billion, accounting for 6.3% of the oracle market share.

Wormhole

Wormhole is a cross-chain bridge launched in 2020, initially connecting Solana and Ethereum, but later expanding to over 30 blockchains. After a $320 million hack in February 2022, Jump used its own funds to compensate all losses, demonstrating the strategic importance of Wormhole in Jump's portfolio. In late 2023, after becoming an independent company, Wormhole continued to maintain its position as a major cross-chain infrastructure for DeFi and NFTs.

Shelby

Shelby is a high-performance decentralized storage network (hot storage) built through a collaboration between Jump Crypto and Aptos Labs, launched in June 2025. Shelby aims for cloud-like speeds while being fully decentralized, serving real-time Web3 applications like video streaming, on-chain social media, and AI feeds. Using the Aptos blockchain as its consensus layer and its own private fiber optic infrastructure, Shelby allows for sub-second data access on a global scale.

Cordial Systems

Cordial Systems originated from Jump's internal custody needs and was spun off into a separate company in March 2024. The Cordial Treasury product allows institutions to self-manage their private keys completely, which differs from traditional MPC custody, and is compatible with over 30 blockchains. Jump is the first client and also an investor in the project.

Jump's "Spiderweb" of Connected Entities

In its journey into crypto, Jump Trading/Jump Crypto has built a wide-reaching yet tightly linked network of influence, comprising projects directly developed by Jump, strategic investments, and blockchains where they play a key infrastructure role.

Solana: The "Savior" and "Favorite"

Solana is the blockchain that Jump is most deeply involved with. From the early days, Jump became the primary market maker for SOL and Solana ecosystem tokens, fueling significant liquidity growth. Beyond its role as a liquidity provider, Jump is deeply involved in Solana's infrastructure with Pyth Network (a price data oracle), Wormhole (a cross-chain bridge), and Firedancer (a new client to increase network speed and stability).

• Top projects with investment from Jump Crypto. Source: DropsTab
• Image Suggestion: A chart from DropsTab showing a portfolio of Jump's crypto investments.

After the FTX collapse, when many market makers withdrew, Jump maintained liquidity for SOL, helping the ecosystem stay afloat. However, this high level of dependence on Jump has raised concerns in the Solana community about the risk of them abruptly leaving, as was rumored to have happened in 2024.

Aptos & Sui: The New Generation of Layer 1

Jump invested very early, even co-leading the $150 million Series A funding round for Sui with FTX Ventures, and making a large investment in Aptos. Beyond providing capital, Jump also collaborates on a technical level, as exemplified by the Shelby project—a high-speed decentralized storage network on Aptos. Cordial, Jump's custody solution, also supports Aptos and Sui. Pyth and Wormhole have both quickly integrated these two blockchains, connecting asset and data flows. With a strategy focused on high-speed blockchains, Jump maintains a neutral position, benefiting from Solana, Aptos, and Sui, and effectively turning all three into an unofficial "Layer 1 alliance."

Other Strategic Investments

In addition to the aforementioned projects, Jump has made strategic investments in foundational blockchains like Sei, Injective, Celestia, and NEAR, as well as dozens of DeFi, NFT, and CeFi projects through Jump Capital, such as Serum, Mercurial, Galxe, Phantom, and KuCoin. This network of investments and products forms a technical, data, storage, and cross-chain "backbone," laying the foundation for Jump's ambitious comeback.

The Motivation Behind Jump's Shift to an Infrastructure Strategy

The lessons from past events involving Terra and FTX reveal the enormous risks of focusing on short-term trading. While earning massive profits from its relationship with Terra and its role as a market maker for FTX, Jump paid a heavy price in terms of legal issues, reputation, and capital. This exposed the inherent fragility of the market-making model in a volatile crypto industry, compelling Jump to seek a more sustainable path: building foundational infrastructure that creates long-term value for the entire ecosystem.

Furthermore, with over 20 years of experience developing ultra-fast trading systems on Wall Street, Jump possesses a top-tier engineering team with deep expertise in optimizing for low latency and parallel processing. Products like Firedancer, Pyth, and Shelby are testaments to their ability to transform this strength into groundbreaking infrastructure products.

Beyond this, after the controversies, Jump also needed to regain the trust of the community and other projects. Contributing to open-source and decentralized products helps Jump position itself as a genuine Web3 builder, while also opening the door for policy dialogues and affirming its role as a solution provider rather than being "the problem" in the market.

Ultimately, Jump understands that infrastructure is the power of the future. If Pyth, Wormhole, and Shelby become pivotal infrastructure layers in the industry, Jump will benefit from service fees, data, and influence, much like how financial conglomerates control payment networks on Wall Street.

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Please do your own research before making investment decisions.