Google Building Its Own Layer-One Blockchain ‘GCUL’ Designed for Financial Institutions

Google is building its own layer-1 blockchain that aims to operate at the “planet scale” and serve financial institutions around the world.

Rich Widmann, the head of Web3 strategy at Google, says the Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL) enables Python-based smart contracts and is the result of years of research and development at the tech giant.

Widmann also says the chain is “performant” and “credibly neutral.”

“It’s why institutions like the CME Group chose the Universal Ledger to explore tokenization and payments on one of the largest commodities exchanges in the world leveraging GCUL.

Besides bringing to bear Google’s distribution, GCUL is a neutral infrastructure layer. Tether won’t use Circle’s blockchain – and Adyen probably won’t use Stripe’s blockchain. But any financial institution can build with GCUL.”

CME Group announced the pilot program with GCUL in March, with Terry Duffy, CME’s chairman and chief executive, noting that the Trump Administration’s regulatory friendliness toward digital assets helped enable the development.

“Google Cloud Universal Ledger has the potential to deliver significant efficiencies for collateral, margin, settlement and fee payments as the world moves toward 24/7 trading.”

A chart shared by Widmann stated that GCUL could benefit from “Google-scale network effects” and reach billions of users and hundreds of institutional partners.