Google Cloud challenges Ripple, Stripe, Circle with L1 Blockchain

Google Cloud launches its own Layer-1 blockchain for financial institutions and takes Ripple, Circle and Stripe in payments.

Google Cloud’s Web3 strategy head, Rich Widmann, shared new details about the blockchain, the Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), in a post of 26 August on LinkedIn.

“GCUL brings years of R&D together at Google to offer financial institutions a new layer 1 that is performance, credibly neutral and makes smart contracts based on Python,” Widmann wrote.

“In addition to bringing Google’s distribution, GCUL is a neutral infrastructure layer,” Widmann added. “Tether will not use the circle blockchain – and Adyen will probably not use Stripe’s blockchain. But any financial institution can build with GCUL.”

By going to blockchain payment infrastructure, Google Cloud positions itself to compete about the financial rails that can form the future of payments. At stake that can ultimately arrange the backbone of digital finances: established technical giants or crypto pioneers.

Google Cloud also wrote in an official Blog post That GCUL “simplifies the management of commercial bank money accounts and facilitates transfers through a distributed ledger, strengthening financial institutions and intermediaries to meet the requirements of their most demanding customers and to effectively compete.”

The increasing number of companies that launch their own block chains in the midst of the growing clarity of the regulations

Google Cloud is the newest company that announced that it works in its own Layer-1 Blockchain network. USD Coin (USDC) Emittentcirkel and payment giant line, are among other things that have announced comparable developments in recent months.

That is because the web3 industry is given more regulatory clarity in the US under the Trump administration.

Widmann also shared a table in which Google Cloud’s Gcul was compared with Circle’s ARC and Stripe’s Tempo Blockchains.

Table comparison of gcul with bow and pace (source: LinkedIn)

According to the table, the Blockchain network of Google Cloud will use the existing user base of the technology giant of “billions of users” and “100’s institutional partners”.

The most important competitive goal is to become a 24/7 infrastructure provider for global capital markets. The team will also try to expand payments and make agentic possibilities with its chain possible.

Google Cloud described his blockchain as a private and “allowed system” in his blog post. However, it said that the network could “make more open as the regulations evolve.”

That closed nature has criticized crypto and web3 purists who claim that the principles of the network are contrary to the decentralized and permissionless values ​​on which the community was built.

“It is a permitted chain, run by an American company with close ties with the government,” an X user said. “I don’t think these people understand what” credibly neutral “means in the context of block chains, because this is literally the opposite of” credible neutral. “

Starknet CEO Eli Ben-Sasson also commented on the project. In response to an X post about the blockchain, he said he thinks companies that make their own Layer-1 chains will not make it.

I think companies are doing L1S is NGMI. Including basis. I know this is a controversial opinion. But remind you that I said the same about Diem (for those who remember it).

-So Ben-Sasson | Starknet.io (@elibensonon) August 27, 2025

Google Cloud will make smart contracts based on Python

Ethereum has enjoyed a first-mover benefit on the market since its foundation in July 2015, because he is the first distributed ledger that makes programmers possible to make decentralized applications (DAPPs) on a blockchain network.

Various financial institutions have used the ability to investigate how it can be used to make new financial products.

According to Defillama, Ethereum still explains most of the value that is locked up in the blockchain room. With approximately $ 94.261 billion in total value locked (TVL), Ethereum currently has a share of 60.41% of the market.

TVL output by blockchain (source: Fill))

The next largest market share goes to Solana, with its TVL of $ 11.231 billion for 7.2% of the value currently locked up on block chains.

However, the smart contracts of Ethereum work on a new programming language called Solidity. Many software developers have learned how to write smart contracts with solidity, but the need to learn a new software offers an obstacle to adoption.

Google Cloud will tackle that problem by making developers possible to write smart contracts with the help of Python, one of the most popular and most used programming languages ​​worldwide.

By one SurveyPython was the third most popular programming language from July 2024, with 51% of the 60.171 respondents from the survey that a preference for Python, while only 1.1% preferred firmness.

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