Google Cloud partners with Tezos blockchain to bring web3 technology to its customers

Google Cloud has partnered with the Tezos Foundation to grow its web3 application development and provide new services for its customers, the companies announced on Wednesday.

“Tezos as an ecosystem has built a reputation in institutional and B2B onboarding,” Mason Edwards, chief commercial officer at Tezos Foundation, said to TechCrunch. “This is going to enable us to onboard institutions and even more massive institutions into this space. This is going to be jet fuel and octane for that.”

The partnership plans to make it easier for all Google Cloud customers to become Tezos “bakers,” or network validators. Bakers are a part of Tezos’ proof-of-stake mechanism, which helps run the protocol and receives rewards. Google Cloud will also become a baker and join existing bakers like gaming company Ubisoft.

Tezos is an open source proof-of-stake blockchain that has more than 2.3 million funded accounts across 158.6 million total transactions, according to its website. It has also partnered and is building with major brands and companies like Manchester United, McLaren and Société Générale, among others.

Last month, Tezos partnered with the California DMV to help the agency digitize car titles and put title transfers on a private Tezos-built blockchain to streamline operations.

“Institutions are paying attention and realize this will be a space for disruption; whether you’re a retailer caring about loyalty programs or consumer engagement or a large institution, blockchain will disrupt parts of your industry,” Edwards said.

Tezos also sees this partnership as an “extremely strong signal” for the developer community to have a massive infrastructure platform like Google Cloud on board, Edwards added.

“Web3 developers and enterprises are looking for enhanced developer tooling and infrastructure that can help accelerate their product timelines,” James Tromans, engineering director for web3 at Google Cloud, said to TechCrunch. “Developers know the value of great technology, and we see an opportunity to provide differentiated offerings that build on top of the foundation that similarly supports many of the products and services that blockchain developers seek to build.”

One example of how Google Cloud is trying to address that is through its Blockchain Node Engine on Ethereum, a dedicated node service that leverages Google Cloud for blockchain-based application development, Tromans noted.

“More companies, both large and small, also want to participate on-chain,” Tromans said. “They want the ability to read and write on-chain to deploy blockchain-based applications.”

To view on-chain data at scale, Google Cloud hosts several public BigQuery datasets on its Marketplace, including full blockchain transaction history for networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Litecoin, Zcash, Theta, Hedera Hashgraph, Band Protocol, Polygon, XRP and Dogecoin.

Through its corporate baking program, new and existing Google Cloud customers will be able to build web3 applications as well as deploy nodes and indexers on Tezos’ protocol. This means companies and developers alike can leverage Tezos blockchain technology alongside Google Cloud’s infrastructure.

“Running nodes at scale is time-consuming, costly and ultimately pulls focus away from building the core products,” Tromans said. The “crux” of the partnership revolves around supporting Tezos’ corporate baking program, which aims to reduce friction for companies looking to participate on-chain and help developers deploy nodes on its blockchain, Tromans noted.

At its core, the Google Cloud partnership aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers to build on the Tezos blockchain, Tromans said.

“This is not only limited to reducing technological barriers, as we are aware that startups in the web3 ecosystem require other forms of support such as mentorship and ways to reduce their infrastructure costs,” Tromans added. “This is another area where Google Cloud is partnering with the Tezos Foundation to provide select startups in the web3 ecosystem with this type of support.”

In general, Google Cloud plans to continue partnering with “key players in the web3 ecosystem” to keep growing innovation for open source technologies, Tromans said. “It’s not about a transactional relationship; instead, it’s about looking for opportunities to empower and enable founders and developers to grow the ecosystem.”

Outside of partnerships, Google Cloud plans to focus this year on “the core principles at the base layer of blockchain technology,” Tromans shared. “We’re excited to build products that address those needs.”