Google comes for crypto incumbents with its own Layer 1 blockchain

Tech giant Google is about to enter the blockchain industry with its own chain, competing with fintech companies developing their own projects.

Rich Widman, head of Web3 strategy at Google, confirmed that it's going to be a so-called Layer 1 (L1) blockchain, named Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL). L1 refers to base blockchains, on top of which other blockchains and applications can be developed. Bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) are the most popular L1 blockchains.

In March 2025, Google Cloud announced that it had partnered with finance giant CME Group to test GCUL for wholesale payments and asset tokenization. At the time, the ledger was described as a "novel distributed ledger from Google Cloud."

"All this talk of Layer 1 blockchains has brought Google's own Layer 1 into focus," Widman said, adding that GCUL will provide financial institutions with a chain "that is performant, credibly neutral and enables Python-based smart contracts."

The head of strategy noted that the new project aims to offer a neutral platform for financial institutions, as, for example, top stablecoin issuer Tether won't be using the blockchain of its competitor Circle.

"<...> and Adyen probably won't use Stripe's blockchain. But any financial institution can build with GCUL," Widman said, promising to release more technical details in the coming months.

He also shared a table, circulating on social media, comparing GCUL and the blockchain projects of Circle and Stripe. It says that GCUL is already in private testnet and will benefit from Google-scale network effects.

However, there's no information on how decentralized the project is going to be, which is considered the key feature of a blockchain.

"Tether won't use Circle's chain and Adyen won't use Stripe's chain, for exactly the same reasons that nobody will use a Google chain. Credible neutrality is where the value of blockchain really lies, and that can only be achieved through a decentralized public chain," @ec265 reacted on X.

Meanwhile, bitcoin analyst James Check, a.k.a. Checkmate, offered a counterpoint:

"Some will say 'but it's not decentralized'!......Yeh, that's the point, brotato, and neither are stablecoins, nor Base [the largest Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain], nor any other chain with the [transactions per second] to be acceptable in commerce."