Google Cloud Challenges Ripple, Stripe, Circle With L1 Blockchain

Google Cloud is launching its personal layer-1 blockchain for monetary establishments, taking up 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 supply monetary establishments with a novel Layer 1 that’s performant, credibly impartial and permits Python-based sensible contracts,” Widmann wrote. 

“In addition to bringing to bear Google’s distribution, GCUL is a impartial infrastructure layer,” Widmann added. “Tether gained’t use Circle’s blockchain – and Adyen most likely 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 would 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 through a distributed ledger, empowering monetary establishments and intermediaries to fulfill the calls for of their most discerning shoppers and compete successfully.” 

Rising Quantity Of Corporations 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 big Stripe, are amongst others which have introduced comparable developments in latest months.

That’s because the Web3 business positive aspects extra regulatory readability within the US beneath 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 big’s present person base of “billions of customers” and “100s of institutional companions.” 

Its fundamental aggressive goal is to change into a 24/7 infrastructure supplier for the worldwide capital markets. The crew may even 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, nevertheless, say that it would make the community “extra open as rules evolve.”

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

“It’s a permissioned chain, ran by an American company with shut ties to the federal government,” one X person 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 challenge. Responding to an X publish in regards to the blockchain, he stated he thinks that firms creating their very own layer-1 chains aren’t going to make it.

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

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

Google Cloud Will Allow Python-Based mostly Good Contracts

Ethereum has loved a first-mover benefit out there since its inception again in July 2015, being the primary distributed ledger to make it attainable 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 house. With round $94.261 billion in complete worth locked (TVL), Ethereum at present has a 60.41% share of the market.

TVL breakdown by blockchain (Supply: DeFiLlama)

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

Nevertheless, Ethereum’s sensible contracts function on a brand new programming language known as Solidity. Many software program builders have realized learn 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 concern by making it attainable for builders to put in writing sensible contracts utilizing Python, which is likely one of the hottest and extensively 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 displaying a choice for Python, whereas only one.1% most well-liked Solidity. 

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