Google launches blockchain node engine for Web3 developers

According to an Oct. 27 announcement, tech-giant Google is launching an in-house Blockchain Node Engine (BNE) based on Google Cloud. As a node-hosting service, BNE enables Web3 companies to relay transactions, deploy smart contracts, and read or write blockchain data directly on Google Cloud. Ethereum will be the first blockchain supported by BNE. As told by Google: 

“Today, manually deploying a node is a time-intensive process that involves provisioning a compute instance, installing an Ethereum client, and waiting for the node to sync with the network. […] Google Cloud’s BNE can make this process faster and easier by allowing developers to deploy a new node with a single operation and specify the desired region and network.”

The service intends to place nodes behind a virtual private cloud firewall, allowing only trusted machines and users to communicate with endpoints. Additionally, services such as Google Cloud Armor would help protect the nodes from distributed denial-of-service attacks. Being a fully managed solution, BNE will also have its own developer team on-call to monitor for potential outages.

Google has been active in the Web3 sector regarding business development. Previously, Google partnered with Near Protocol to provide technical support for the latter’s grant recipients. Two weeks prior, the tech giant teamed up with Coinbase to bring crypto payments to its cloud services.

A number of prominent Web3 companies — such as Solana, Hedera and Dapper Labs — are currently onboarded with Google Cloud. Layer-1 blockchain company Aptos has also said that its node deployment times have been reduced to less than 15 minutes through its Google Cloud integration.