A system and method support a reference store in a distributed computing environment such as a distributed data grid. The system associates a ticket with the reference store, wherein the reference store contains a plurality of references. Furthermore, the system uses the ticket to expose the reference store to one or more consumers in the distributed computing environment. The reference store type is selected in response to the number of references required to be stored and access overhead. Each reference store can be inflated or deflated according to the number of references it contains. Selection of different reference store types allows for reduced memory overhead while still providing acceptable reference retrieval times. The reduction in memory overhead enhances performance and capabilities of a distributed computing environment such as a distributed data grid.