Google Cloud Challenges Ripple, Stripe And Circle With New Layer-1 Blockchain For Financial Institutions
Google Cloud is launching its own layer-1 blockchain for financial institutions, taking on Ripple, Circle, and Stripe in payments. Google Cloud’s Web3 Head of Strategy, Rich Widmann, shared new details about the blockchain, called the Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), in an Aug. 26 post on Linkedin . “GCUL brings together years of R&D at Google to provide financial institutions with a novel Layer 1 that is performant, credibly neutral and enables Python-based smart contracts,” Widmann wrote. “Besides bringing to bear Google’s distribution, GCUL is a neutral infrastructure layer,” Widmann added. “Tether won’t use Circle’s blockchain – and Adyen probably won’t use Stripe’s blockchain. But any financial institution can build with GCUL.” By moving into blockchain payments infrastructure, Google Cloud is positioning itself to compete over the financial rails that coul...