Blockchain technology is yielding tremendous innovation and value creation for consumers and businesses around the world. As the technology becomes more mainstream, companies need scalable, secure, and sustainable infrastructure on which to grow their businesses and support their networks. Google Cloud believes it can play an important role in this evolution.

Building on their existing work with blockchain developers, exchanges, and other companies in this space, Google Cloud announced a new dedicated Digital Assets Team within Google Cloud to support our customers’ needs in building, transacting, storing value, and deploying new products on blockchain-based platforms. This new team will enable our customers to accelerate their efforts in this emerging space and help underpin the blockchain ecosystems of tomorrow.

Payments Using Crypto Meets Google Cloud

Blockchain and distributed-ledger-based companies like Hedera, Theta Labs, and Dapper Labs have already chosen to build on top of Google Cloud for scalability, flexibility, and security. Moving forward, Google Cloud’s Digital Assets Team will undertake a number of short- and long-term initiatives to support companies in the digital assets/blockchain ecosystem, including:

• Providing dedicated node hosting/remote procedure call (RPC) nodes for developers, allowing users to deploy blockchain validators on Google Cloud via a single click (“click to deploy”).
• Participating in node validation and on-chain governance with select partners.
• Helping developers and users host their nodes on the cleanest cloud in the industry, supporting their environmental, social, and governance initiatives.
• Supporting on-chain governance via participation from Google Cloud executives and senior engineers.
• Hosting several public BigQuery datasets on our Marketplace, including full blockchain transaction history for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Litecoin, Zcash, Theta, Hedera Hashgraph, Band Protocol, Polygon, XRP, and Dogecoin.
• Driving co-development and integration into Google’s robust partner ecosystem, including participating in the Google Cloud Marketplace.
• Embracing joint go-to-market initiatives with our ecosystem partners where Google Cloud can be the connective tissue between traditional enterprise and blockchain technologies.

Google Cloud will build out their team and is also exploring opportunities in the future to enable Google Cloud customers to make and receive payments using cryptocurrencies.

Blockchains and digital assets are changing the way the world stores and moves its information —as well as value. As an infrastructure provider, Google Cloud views the evolution of blockchain technology and decentralized networks today as analogous to the rise of open source and the internet 10-15 years ago. Just as open-source developments were integral to the early days of the internet, blockchain is yielding innovation and value creation for consumers and businesses. As the technology becomes more mainstream, companies will need scalable, secure infrastructure on which to grow their businesses and support their networks.

As such, Google Cloud’s technology to the blockchain market with the following principles:

• Consistent with Google Cloud’s core business: We are specialists in data-powered innovation with leading infrastructure, industry solutions, and other cutting-edge technology. We pursue blockchain projects and partnerships that align with our mission and our expertise.
• User trust and governance: Blockchain networks raise novel questions concerning legal compliance and user privacy. We will maintain our commitment to our users through a robust focus on privacy and user trust, as well as an uncompromising focus on compliance with applicable laws.
• Network-agnostic: Google’s infrastructure will seek to preserve optionality of networks for the benefit of users.

This article first appeared on fintechnews.am