From encryption quantitative giant crocodiles to infrastructure hermits, Jump Crypto's "penitential" transformation.

High-frequency trading giant Jump Crypto, once on the cusp of the storm, quietly exited the market in a series of violent storms. Now, the secret force that once dominated on-chain liquidity is trying to return to center stage as a new "crypto infrastructure builder." (Synopsis: Jump returns to the crypto market business, "black history" falls into an embarrassing situation) (Background supplement: Jump Crypto is rumored to be investigated by the US CFTC, suspected of manipulating the Terra market? High-frequency trading giant Jump Crypto, once on the cusp of the storm, fell silent in a series of violent storms. Now, the secret force that once dominated on-chain liquidity is trying to return to center stage as a new "crypto infrastructure builder." Recently, Jump made its first high-profile statement, announcing a full transformation into a core enabler of on-chain infrastructure, and rarely disclosed the progress of its participation in US crypto policy lobbying, trying to rebuild market trust in the new crypto cycle through technological innovation and regulatory cooperation. Transformed into an infrastructure builder, participating in the US crypto policy lobbying for the first time On June 20, the long-key Jump Crypto made a rare voice and officially announced that it was reintroducing itself to the world as a "crypto infrastructure builder". Regarded as one of the largest crypto trading players, the company is transforming from a behind-the-scenes trading giant to a core enabler of on-chain infrastructure. In a public announcement released on its website, Jump Crypto recalled that its low-key actions have never stopped building over the past few years, and the team has always focused on identifying and breaking through the core bottlenecks that limit the performance and scalability of cryptographic systems. "We don't sit in an ivory tower and talk about the future ten years from now; We start with the hardest bones. History tells us that construction itself breeds more construction." Jump wrote. Jump emphasized its core contributions to Pyth, Wormhole, Firedancer, DoubleZero and other projects, and said that although these projects have their own technical directions, they all originated from the technical limitations encountered by Jump in real transactions on the chain. It is this "transaction-driven" path that has allowed the Jump team to evolve from liquidity providers to key enablers of crypto infrastructure. But Jump has also repeatedly emphasized in its announcement that despite playing a central contributor role in multiple infrastructure projects, it has never had control over these networks. "We firmly believe that the essence of decentralization is that no single entity has 'unilateral control'. So we build protocols that are not only open source, but even completely open source and freely forkable. In our view, decentralization can be diverse (validators, token governance, etc.), but the core criterion is always: Is there the ability to unilaterally modify the protocol?" At the same time, Jump has also laid out security infrastructure, including its self-developed self-custodial wallet operating platform Cordial Systems, which can provide enterprise-level digital asset wallet solutions for Jump and multi-centralized exchanges; Asymmetric Research, an incubated security team, has helped recover more than $5 billion in potential risks and handled more than 100 security incidents. It is worth noting that Jump's high-profile voice is not only a "clarification" of the role, but also reveals that it has actively participated in proposing regulatory policies for the first time. Over the past few decades, Jump Trading, the parent company, has almost never made a public policy appearance. Jump Crypto submitted a policy comment letter to the SEC last month, which is the first time in the history of parent company Jump Trading to publicly express its position on public policy, sharing their views on how the US securities law adapts to the digital asset era, calling for the introduction of common-sense reforms to eliminate the regulatory ambiguity and uncertainty widely felt by the industry. "Now is the best window to restructure the financial infrastructure and even the way organizations are coordinated. It is not only the maturity of technology, but also the change of policy that has brought the industry to a key turning point." Jump points out. After multiple crises, seeking a comeback after regulatory warming in the United States Jump Crypto was once the flagship force of Wall Street quantitative legend Jump Trading to lay out the crypto world, but since being mired in a series of turmoil such as UST manipulation controversy, FTX bankruptcy and Wormhole hacking, the high-frequency trading giant active on the front line of crypto once faced a reputation crisis and financial pressure, and chose to gradually fade out of the industry spotlight. Jump really fell into a word-of-mouth crisis, which began with the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in 2022. According to SEC filings, Jump, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Tai Mo Shan Limited, reached an agreement with Terraform Labs during the first decoupling of UST in May 2021, using more than $20 million of its own funds to secretly purchase UST, in an attempt to "artificially" maintain its $1 anchor. In exchange, Jump received discounted subscription rights for massive LUNA. This arrangement greatly enhances the market's illusion of UST's self-healing ability and misleads the public's judgment of the effectiveness of its algorithmic mechanism. The SEC alleges that between January 2021 and May 2022, Jump effectively acted as the legal underwriter of LUNA tokens, illegally distributing securities in the U.S. market without registration. Jump has accumulated nearly $1.3 billion in profits through low-priced purchases and high-priced shipments. Finally, at the end of 2024, Jump reached a $123 million settlement with the SEC, which also revealed the face of this mysterious trading giant in the deep waters of the crypto market. The crisis didn't stop at Terra. In February 2022, the Wormhole protocol owned by Certus One, a cross-chain bridge developer previously acquired by Jump, was hacked, losing up to $325 million, becoming one of the largest security incidents in the crypto industry at that time. To maintain the availability and confidence of the protocol, Jump chose to "pay out of pocket" to fill the loophole, investing $320 million in a bailout. Although this move has saved its short-term reputation, it has also seriously eroded Jump's own capital. FTX's thunderstorm has exacerbated Jump's funding black hole. As an important market maker and strategic partner of FTX and its sister company Alameda Research, Jump is not only deeply involved in the liquidity construction of its platform, but also co-invested heavily in the Solana ecosystem, and is one of the largest institutional participants in the Solana ecosystem. However, with the collapse of FTX, the price of the Solana project was greatly reduced, and the ecology collapsed in an instant, further exacerbating the tension on Jump's balance sheet. According to Michael Lewis' disclosure in his book Going Infinite, Jump lost as much as $206 million in the FTX collapse, and its affiliate Tai Mo Shan also lost more than $75 million, totaling more than $300 million. In the face of multiple crackdowns, continued tightening of regulations in the United States, and the arrival of the crypto winter, Jum...