NodeShift is a decentralized, no-code AI cloud platform that enables one-click deployment of AI agents and LLMs, has integrated Crust’s decentralized storage offering into its platform, making it easy for organizations to leverage cost-effective, high-performance object storage for cold and archive data.
Crust is a decentralized storage network providing reliable, secure, and scalable data solutions, particularly suited for cold and archive storage. With a robust infrastructure, Crust specializes in long-term data retention at competitive rates, making it a trusted choice for enterprises requiring large-scale data archiving.
In early 2025, NodeShift and Crust formed a strategic partnership that aimed to integrate Crust’s decentralized storage solution into NodeShift’s suite of data and compute offerings. Through this partnership, NodeShift customers can easily tap into Crust’s low-cost, redundant cold and archive storage while still benefitting from NodeShift’s expansive network of computing and GPU resources around the globe.
Challenge
1. Growing data demands
Many of NodeShift’s customers ranging from AI startups to VPN and marketing companies generate, use, and store vast amounts of data. As these datasets grow exponentially, storage demands place heavy strain on cost, efficiency, and longevity.
2. Unpredictable storage costs
Traditional cloud storage providers can become cost-prohibitive for large-scale, long-term data retention. Customers faced uncertain monthly bills, often with hidden fees for retrieval or data egress.
3. Ensuring global accessibility
NodeShift customers need their archived data to be readily accessible regardless of geographic location, and they want to seamlessly connect their datasets with GPU clusters or compute nodes worldwide for advanced processing.
4. Security and redundancy
As volumes of data grow, so do concerns about data security and redundancy. Customers expect top-notch encryption, data replication, and compliance with relevant data protection standards.
Why Crust?
1. Decentralized architecture
Crust’s decentralized storage network uses a distributed set of nodes, ensuring data redundancy across multiple servers and reducing single points of failure.
2. Cost effective cold storage
Crust’s blockchain-based model and efficient allocation of storage resources help maintain low-cost, secure cold and archive storage.
3. Flexible scalability
As data grows, the decentralized structure allows nearly infinite scaling. Crust’s pay as you go model enables enterprises to manage costs effectively.
4. Seamless integration
Crust offers APIs and integration toolkits that simplified the process of adding it as a new storage supplier into the NodeShift platform. This quick path to integration helped NodeShift bring the solution to market faster.
The partnership & implementation
1. Integration approach
NodeShift designed a storage-layer integration to seamlessly route archive and cold data to Crust’s network. Leveraging Crust’s APIs and decentralized protocols, NodeShift set up a straightforward pathway for customers:
- Data ingestion: NodeShift’s orchestration system tags datasets designated for long-term storage and transfers them to Crust’s network.
- Data verification: Crust’s decentralized consensus validates and stores the data across multiple nodes, ensuring redundancy.
- Metadata tracking: NodeShift keeps metadata about the archived files, simplifying retrieval and guaranteeing traceability.
2. Unified dashboard
Within the NodeShift portal, customers see Crust storage as an available “cold storage” option. They can allocate capacities, monitor usage, and track associated costs side by side with their compute usage.
3. On-demand retrieval
When customers need to spin up GPU instances to process archived data, NodeShift’s global scheduler pulls the data from Crust’s nodes, ensuring minimal downtime and friction. Customers can easily bring archived data online to any of NodeShift’s compute regions.
Outcomes
1. Lower total cost of ownership
By offloading cold and archive data to Crust, NodeShift’s customers have significantly reduced their long-term storage costs. Pay-per-use models and decentralized architecture translate into transparent billing without hidden data retrieval fees.
2. Scalable and safe storage
Thanks to the partnership, customers no longer worry about data spikes or expansions, they can seamlessly add more storage capacity. Data remains decentralized, replicated, and protected.
3. Improved performance & accessibility
Integration with NodeShift’s GPU and compute clusters globally means archived data can be quickly retrieved and processed close to the compute location. This lowers latency and speeds up workflows for machine learning, analytics, and data transformations.
4. Enhanced security and compliance
Crust’s approach to encryption and distributed redundancy aligns with strict enterprise security requirements. With the NodeShift management layer, customers enjoy consistent security policies and monitoring across both compute and storage.
5. Streamlined user experience
NodeShift’s unified dashboard and APIs consolidate management of compute, GPUs, and now cold storage, presenting customers with one cohesive interface rather than multiple siloed systems.
