Google Cloud Challenges Ripple, Stripe, Circle With L1 Blockchain

Google Cloud is launching its personal layer-1 blockchain for monetary establishments, taking over Ripple, Circle, and Stripe in funds.

Google Cloud’s Web3 Head of Technique, Wealthy Widmann, shared new particulars in regards to the blockchain, known as the Google Cloud Common Ledger (GCUL), in an Aug. 26 publish on Linkedin. 

“GCUL brings collectively years of R&D at Google to offer monetary establishments with a novel Layer 1 that’s performant, credibly impartial and allows Python-based sensible contracts,” Widmann wrote. 

“Apart from bringing to bear Google’s distribution, GCUL is a impartial infrastructure layer,” Widmann added. “Tether gained’t use Circle’s blockchain – and Adyen in all probability gained’t use Stripe’s blockchain.  However any monetary establishment can construct with GCUL.”  

By shifting into blockchain funds infrastructure, Google Cloud is positioning itself to compete over the monetary rails that might form the way forward for funds. At stake could also be who in the end controls the spine of digital finance: established tech giants or crypto pioneers.

Google Cloud additionally wrote in an official weblog publish that GCUL “simplifies the administration of economic financial institution cash accounts and facilitates transfers by way of a distributed ledger, empowering monetary establishments and intermediaries to satisfy the calls for of their most discerning purchasers and compete successfully.” 

Rising Quantity Of Firms Launching Their Personal Blockchains Amid The Rising Regulatory Readability

Google Cloud is the newest firm to announce that it’s working by itself layer-1 blockchain community. USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle, and funds large Stripe, are amongst others which have introduced related developments in latest months.

That’s because the Web3 trade beneficial properties extra regulatory readability within the US underneath the Trump Administration. 

Widmann additionally shared a desk evaluating Google Cloud’s GCUL with Circle’s Arc and Stripe’s Tempo blockchains.

Desk evaluating GCUL with Arc and Tempo (Supply: Linkedin)

In keeping with the desk, Google Cloud’s blockchain community will faucet into the tech large’s present consumer base of “billions of customers” and “100s of institutional companions.” 

Its essential aggressive goal is to turn out to be a 24/7 infrastructure supplier for the worldwide capital markets. The workforce may also look to increase funds and allow agentic capabilities with its chain. 

Google Cloud described its blockchain as a non-public and “permissioned system” in its weblog publish. It did, nonetheless, say that it’d make the community “extra open as laws evolve.”

That closed-off nature has drawn criticism from crypto and Web3 purists who argue that the community’s ideas go in opposition to the decentralized and permissionless values the neighborhood is constructed on.

“It’s a permissioned chain, ran by an American company with shut ties to the federal government,” one X consumer stated. ”I don’t assume these folks perceive what ‘credibly impartial’ means within the context of blockchains, as a result of that is actually the precise reverse of ‘credibly impartial’.”

Starknet CEO Eli Ben-Sasson additionally commented on the mission. Responding to an X publish in regards to the blockchain, he stated he thinks that firms creating their very own layer-1 chains are usually not going to make it.

I believe firms doing L1s is ngmi. Together with base. I do know it is a contentious opinion. However reminding you I stated the identical about Diem (for many who keep in mind it).

— Eli Ben-Sasson | Starknet.io (@EliBenSasson) August 27, 2025

Google Cloud Will Allow Python-Primarily based Good Contracts

Ethereum has loved a first-mover benefit available in the market since its inception again in July 2015, being the primary distributed ledger to make it potential for programmers to create decentralized functions (dApps) on a blockchain community. 

A number of monetary establishments have utilized that functionality to discover how it may be used to create new monetary merchandise.

In keeping with DeFillama, Ethereum nonetheless accounts for almost all of the worth that’s locked up within the blockchain area. With round $94.261 billion in whole worth locked (TVL), Ethereum at the moment has a 60.41% share of the market.

TVL breakdown by blockchain (Supply: DeFiLlama)

The following largest market share goes to Solana, with its $11.231 billion TVL accounting for 7.2% of the worth at the moment locked up on blockchains. 

Nonetheless, Ethereum’s sensible contracts function on a brand new programming language known as Solidity. Many software program builders have realized tips on how to write sensible contracts utilizing Solidity, however the necessity to be taught a brand new software program does current an impediment for adoption.

Google Cloud will handle that problem by making it potential for builders to jot down sensible contracts utilizing Python, which is likely one of the hottest and broadly used programming languages globally. 

In keeping with a Statista survey, Python was the third hottest programming language as of July 2024, with 51% of the survey’s 60,171 respondents exhibiting a desire for Python, whereas just one.1% most well-liked Solidity. 

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